Meta Apologises As India Warns Over Safe Harbour Protection

Sources from the administration, the admission came during a meeting with top global Meta officials in New Delhi with officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

MeitY Grills META Executives On AI-Generated Content

According to PTI, the IT giant conceded to being paid a substantial amount of money for the promotion of specific types of content to "certain audiences". The sources also added that Meta was warned its eligibility to keep the safe-harbour protection provided under the IT Act could be undermined due to its role in actively curating and promoting third party content rather than just hosting it. The safe harbour immunity is governed by rules under Section 79 and dictates the circumstances under which an intermediary can provide such a protection.

The sources also stated that the company executives were ' grilled badly' as they also have the obligation to protect children and warned them that they cannot make advertising revenue on child abuse content and claim immunity.

Fresh Meeting Scheduled On Thursday

The developments come from scheduled meetings between senior Meta executives and senior IT officials over India compliance, content moderation, and safeguarding AI-generated and CSAM content.

The secretary in the MeitY, S Krishnan said top executives including Joel Kaplan head of public policy for Meta will be meeting officials again on Thursday to be grilled about the measures taken to prevent CSAM on its platforms and to keep a tab on synthetically generated content.

Dubey Demands Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Apology

Chairman of Parliament’s Standing Committee on Information Technology, Nishikant Dubey urged Mark Zuckerberg to apologise personally after its meeting with the social media giant representatives in regard to the temporary removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's video from its Facebook.

Speaking after a meeting which was spread over three hours, Dubey said Meta has acknowledged the fact that Modi’s video remained inaccessible for about five hours from 12.30 am to 5 am.

Government Flags PM Modi Video Removal

The central government has flagged the temporary removal of a video of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from his Facebook feed. The video which was based on a speech by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to students and young people on examination issues and strict actions on paper leaks was found missing from the social media platform for about five to six hours before being restored again.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Electronics and IT have viewed the incident very seriously and given a strict warning to Meta that Zuckerberg will lose its safe harbour protection under Section 79(3) of IT act if he fails to issue an apology within three days.