New Delhi: Meta apologised for the temporary removal of Prime Minister Narendra 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 said on Wednesday after executives of the US tech giant met Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
Meta’s global affairs head Joel Kaplan flew in from the US for meetings with Indian officials.
In a written statement, 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. They said the apology came from company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Kaplan, who served in the administration of George W Bush, including as White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, before joining Meta (then Facebook) in 2011, was summoned by the Indian government to explain temporarily removing Modi’s July 23 Facebook post, in which he addressed students and promised stringent action against examination paper leaks.
He first met IT Secretary S Krishnan, followed by a meeting with Vaishnaw.
After the meeting, sources said Meta executives admitted to failures involving child sexual abuse content and deepfakes and admitted that “a lot of money was paid for boosting a certain type of content”.
Neither Kaplan nor any other Meta official acknowledged the claims or offered any comments.
The temporary restricting of Modi’s post had snowballed into a major political controversy in the country, with the government summoning global executives of the firm that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and a parliamentary committee seeking an apology from Zuckerberg within three days.
Government sources said the Meta team apologised and expressed regret over the incident and over other content moderation failures.
