A selfie post in which the prime minister addressed the nation\u2019s youth was briefly removed, leading to a backlash<\/p>\n
India has reportedly summoned a top Meta official over the company\u2019s removal of a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the country\u2019s youth, which sparked an angry backlash against the social media giant.
\nThe global head of public policy of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has been summoned by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology over the issue, reports citing sources said.
\nThe selfie video by the Indian prime minister was posted on July 23 amid student protests organized by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) over leaked national entrance exam questions. The video was Modi\u2019s first outreach to the country\u2019s youth, who had been demanding the resignation of the education minister, promising stringent measures against paper leaks.
\nThe issue gained attention after an X post by an activist from Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party, who noticed that the video had been removed on Facebook in the early hours of Tuesday. Users trying to access the video got the message that it was not available in India due to a \u201clegal request,\u201d leading to a swift online backlash.
\nThe platform restored the video soon afterwards, but the block prompted the Indian government to summon the Meta official for an explanation, according to media reports.<\/p>\n
Meta Took Down PM Modi’s Video. Then Called It “An Error”.According to Moneycontrol, Meta ‘mistakenly’ restricted access to a Facebook video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to Gen Z before restoring it hours later.The company initially appeared to cite a legal\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/sjKwKyntE3\u2014 RT_India (@RT_India_news) July 28, 2026 <\/p>\n
\u201cThe content was removed in error and has since been restored,\u201d Meta was quoted by news agency ANI as saying.
\nMeta\u2019s explanation for the removal of Modi\u2019s post was \u201cnot reasonable\u201d and deeper discussions were needed on the matter, PTI reported government sources as saying. The \u201cissue is far from settled,\u201d they told the agency.
\nThe combined userbase of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram in India is more than 1 billion, making it a top market for Meta.
\nThe video post was the first acknowledgement by the prime minister of the concerns of students and parents over the paper leak, which allegedly drove dozens of students to commit suicide.\u00a0
\nThe student protests were called off after Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Read more<\/p>\n
From meme to mayhem: Why India\u2019s Cockroach protesters refused to leave<\/p>\n
The development follows another high-profile case in which social media companies are facing legal suits over defamatory content. On Monday, a court allowed the federal transport minister to proceed with legal action against Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram, X, Google, and the unidentified entities or pages being used to spread \u2018defamatory\u2019 content.
\nA parliamentary panel has also summoned representatives of Meta, X, Google and Snapchat to appear before it on August 3 to discuss user privacy and public order.
\nEarlier this month, India had raised concerns over the roll-out of usernames by messaging app WhatsApp, also owned by Meta, calling it a potential cybersecurity risk. WhatsApp is the top messaging platform in the country of 1.4 billion, with more than 500 million users.
\nIn June, New Delhi temporarily banned the Telegram app, claiming it was a key facilitator in the question paper leak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A selfie post in which the prime minister addressed the nation\u2019s youth was briefly removed, leading to a backlash India has reportedly summoned a top Meta official over the company\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongolianews.mn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}