India summons Meta global team on Aug 5-6 over PM Modi post, CSAM concern

The government has summoned Meta's global team to India on August 5 and 6, with officials set to question the social media giant over a series of issues ranging from the brief restriction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platforms and safeguards around verified accounts.

Confirming the meeting, IT Secretary S Krishnan on Tuesday said the government wants to understand why such lapses continue despite Meta being one of the world's leading technology companies.

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"There are a range of issues... the CSAM issue was raised, so what measures have been taken regarding that, and synthetically generated information... to what extent that is being looked at. Then, of course, for prominent personalities, when they have verified accounts, if content has to be taken down, there have to be safeguards... all of these will be the issues," Krishnan told reporters on the sidelines of the launch of an independent multimodal AI evaluation platform by AI4Bharat at IIT Madras and Josh Talks AI.

"We would like to understand from them as to why some of these things have not been working the way they are supposed to work, and what are the challenges," he added.

The meeting comes after Meta briefly restricted access to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post last month in which he addressed students on the NEET-UG 2026 paper leak and promised stricter action against examination paper leaks. The company later restored the post, attributed the incident to a technical error and apologised, but the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) termed the explanation "inadequate."

Krishnan said the government will also seek updates on the steps Meta has taken to curb CSAM after the company came under scrutiny over child sexual exploitative and abuse material appearing in paid advertisements on Instagram. The Centre had earlier issued a notice to Meta over the issue.

He also stressed the need for stronger safeguards for verified accounts, saying content belonging to prominent personalities should not be taken down without adequate checks.

"As one of the leading technology companies in the world, Meta should have the technology to address such issues effectively," Krishnan said.

The government's scrutiny has intensified after the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology on Monday questioned Meta executives over the temporary removal of the Prime Minister's video, content moderation practices, algorithmic bias, deepfakes and CSAM.

Committee chairman Nishikant Dubey said Meta should lose the safe harbour protection available to intermediaries under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act if CEO Mark Zuckerberg does not apologise over the incident. According to ANI, Dubey alleged that Meta had admitted the Prime Minister's video remained unavailable for more than four hours and called for legal accountability.

Dubey also referred to an FIR filed by the Telangana government against Meta, saying it reflected broader concerns over the company's compliance with Indian laws.

"You know that the Chief Minister of the Congress government of Telangana has filed an FIR against Meta India. We have said that safe harbour should be removed in all these matters," he said, according to ANI.

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The BJP MP also alleged that Meta and other social media platforms had failed to adequately remove content related to child sexual abuse material and content targeting women despite the government's rules. He claimed the platforms had not responded adequately to concerns raised by the Home Ministry and the IT Ministry.

According to PTI, Meta representatives told the parliamentary panel they were ready to apologise for the temporary restriction of the Prime Minister's post. However, several members argued that an apology alone would not be sufficient and sought accountability over the incident.

Representatives from MeitY, the Ministry of Home Affairs and major social media platforms, including Meta, Google, X, YouTube and Snapchat, attended the parliamentary committee meeting on the regulation of social and digital platforms.