Meta's global team on Wednesday met senior officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), following the government's summons over the brief removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post.
The meeting came as a Parliamentary Standing Committee demanded an apology from Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg over the removal of Modi's speech from Facebook.
In a letter to the secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, a director of the Lok Sabha Secretariat said protection and immunity for Zuckerberg could be withdrawn if an apology was not issued within three days.
The government also raised concerns over the wrongful removal of content posted by prominent personalities and lapses in curbing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on Meta's platforms.
Top Meta executives, including Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, met IT Secretary S Krishnan and other senior MeitY officials in a meeting that lasted around 45 minutes. The delegation is also scheduled to meet Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw later on Wednesday.
The meeting assumes significance as the government had summoned Meta's top global executives after Prime Minister Modi's recent Facebook post, addressing young people and promising stringent action against paper leaks, was briefly restricted on the platform.
While the US-headquartered social media company attributed the incident to a technical glitch and apologised, MeitY described the explanation as "inadequate".
Meta, which owns Facebook, said the content had been removed "in error" and was subsequently restored.
The company has also come under regulatory scrutiny over child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram. Last month, the government issued a notice to Meta over the issue.
"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, 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 (taken up)," Krishnan told reporters on Tuesday.
Meta, as one of the leading technology companies in the world, should have the technology to address such issues effectively, he had said.
"We would like to understand from them (Meta) as to why some of these things have not been working the way they are supposed to work, and what are the challenges," Krishnan added.
For platforms, there needs to be a clear understanding of India's law, what compliance must look like, "and a clearer understanding of how they intend to make sure compliance happens", Krishnan said.
Government sources had earlier said the issue was not just about technical aspects, but also about "national security and public order".
As the government delivers an ultimatum to Meta, the company's global team will be "categorically" asked to clarify issues relating to algorithmic bias, how its algorithms operate, and the company's role in maintaining public order.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Meta informed the IT Ministry that posts by the Prime Minister and other prominent accounts would be subject to additional oversight, with multiple levels of checks involving senior company officials.
Meta also wrote to the government outlining the enhanced safeguards it implemented on July 28 for content posted by Prime Minister Modi and other prominent accounts.
Modi's July 23 Instagram post, which was later shared on Facebook, marked his first direct selfie video aimed at engaging with young people and highlighting the government's commitment to crack down on paper leaks amid student protests organised by the Cockroach Janta Party. The Facebook version of the post was briefly restricted before being restored.
The IT Ministry maintained that Meta's explanation, citing a technical glitch in its automated content filters, was "not reasonable". Officials had said that if an automated system glitch caused the error, Meta, as a technology company, should improve its own tools without delay.
Meta officials had attributed the error to AI-powered automated content filters reviewing shared posts and subsequent videos that circulated after the Prime Minister's original post.
The company told the government that its automated filters had inadvertently removed the original post itself.
By summoning Meta's global executives, the government aims to ensure that the company's top leadership is fully aware of the concerns raised by Indian authorities.
The decision to summon global executives, rather than only local representatives, underscores the Centre's intention to engage directly with Meta's international leadership on platform accountability.
