The chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology on Wednesday said Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg should apologise within three days over the temporary removal of a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Facebook, warning that the company could lose its safe harbour protections if it failed to do so.
Meta is the parent company of Facebook.
“If he fails to do so, we will revoke the ‘safe harbour’ protection currently provided to his social media platforms, a privilege that they have been misusing,” committee chairman Nishikant Dubey told reporters, according to ANI.
Dubey said the parliamentary panel had informed the ministries of home affairs and electronics and information technology that removing the prime minister’s video “was not the responsibility of an intermediary but that of a publisher”.
“Therefore, Zuckerberg must apologise within three days,” he said.
Dubey also alleged that abusive, violent and objectionable content shared on Meta’s platforms could lead to “a flood” of first information reports being filed against the company’s chief in India.
Under the Information Technology Act, safe harbour protections shield online intermediaries such as social media platforms from liability for third-party content, provided they comply with applicable legal requirements and government directions.
The controversy relates to a video posted by Modi on July 23, in which he said strict action would be taken against those responsible for paper leaks in competitive examinations. On July 28, the video was briefly unavailable to users in India, displaying a notice that access had been withheld following a legal request. The video was later restored.
Dubey said the video had remained inaccessible for about five hours.
Following the incident, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned Meta’s global head of public policy. The ministry said at the time that Meta had attributed the removal to a technical error, but added that the explanation was not “acceptable in its entirety”.
Dubey has argued that the temporary removal of the video suggested Meta had acted beyond the role of a neutral intermediary.
His remarks came ahead of a meeting on Wednesday between a Meta delegation led by Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan and officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
The ministry said the meeting would also cover Meta’s compliance with Indian laws, child sexual abuse material on its platforms, artificial intelligence-generated content and safeguards for verified accounts.
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