Govt questioning Meta team whether company following law of the land

The government is questioning the visiting Meta team on whether the company is following the law of the land, following summons to the social media giant over temporary restriction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post recently, sources said on Thursday, August 6.

The government and the Meta global team are currently engaged in discussions.

Meta will also be questioned on their algorithms, whether the compliance mechanism has sufficient checks and balances, and guardrails to meet constitutional and legal requirements, government sources said.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw met the Meta global team on Thursday, sources said, adding that the ministry's discussions with technical teams will continue thereafter.

The US-headquartered tech giant had apologised for the temporary removal of Modi's Facebook post as well as for failures ranging from child sexual abuse content to deepfakes and boosting certain content on being paid "a lot of money", government sources had said on Wednesday, August 5, after Meta executives met Vaishnaw.

While Meta's global affairs head Joel Kaplan, who flew in from the US for meetings with Indian officials, in a written statement said he "apologised to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi's post", government sources, who refused to be identified, said the apology came from company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.