Govt to raise CSAM lapses, wrongful account action issue with Meta; global team in India on Aug 5-6

Lapses in curbing `CSAM' as well as wrongful action on prominent accounts are among a slew of concerns that the Government will raise when it meets Meta's global team, IT Secretary S Krishnan said on Tuesday, adding that a company at the forefront of technology should have been able to make its systems work as they are supposed to.

Meta's global team will be in India on August 5 and 6, Krishnan said.

The upcoming meeting is significant as the government has summoned Meta's top global executives after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent Facebook post addressing Indian youth and promising stringent action against paper leaks was briefly restricted on the platform. Sources said top Meta executive Joel Kaplan is expected to be present at the meeting.

While the US-headquartered social media giant had attributed the incident to a technical glitch and apologised, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had found the explanation "inadequate". The company, which owns Facebook, had said that the content was removed "in error" and was restored on the platform.

Meta has also been under regulatory scrutiny over the issue of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram, and the government, last month, slapped a notice on 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 the sidelines of the launch of an independent multimodal AI evaluation platform by AI4Bharat at IIT Madras and Josh Talks AI.

Meta, as one of the leading technology companies in the world, should have the technology to address such issues effectively, he 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 that the issue is not just about technical aspects, but about "national security and public order". Meta's global team will be "categorically" asked to clarify on issues around algorithmic bias, how their algorithm operates and the company's role in public order, they had said.

In the immediate aftermath of the issue, Meta had informed the IT Ministry that posts by the prime minister and select prominent accounts will be subject to additional oversight on the platform, with multiple levels of checks involving senior company officials. Meta wrote to the government outlining the specifics of enhanced and rigorous safeguards it implemented (on July 28) for content posted by PM Modi and other prominent accounts.

Modi's July 23 Instagram post, later shared on Facebook, had marked his first direct selfie video aimed at engaging with the youth and underscoring the government's commitment to crack down on paper leaks amid students' protests organised by the Cockroach Janta Party at that time. The Facebook version of the post was briefly restricted by Meta before being restored.

The IT Ministry maintained that Meta's explanation to the government, citing a technical glitch in the automated content filters, was "not reasonable". They had said that if indeed a glitch in the automated system caused the error, then Meta, being a technology company, must surely hasten to improve its own tools.

Meta officials had attributed the error to AI-powered automated content filters reviewing shared posts and subsequent videos that had circulated following the original post by the prime minister. Meta had told the Government that its automated filters inadvertently ended up briefly removing the original post itself.

By summoning global executives, the government wants to ensure that Meta's leadership – all the way to the top – is made fully aware of concerns being raised by Indian authorities. The summoning of global executives, rather than only local representatives, underscores the Centre's intent to directly engage Meta's international leadership on platform accountability.

On Tuesday, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey alleged that some social media platforms are promoting "anti-establishment" and "anti-democracy" content while failing to curb illegal material related to women and children.

Dubey, who heads the department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on communications and information technology, said the panel has unanimously recommended withdrawal of the "safe harbour" protection available to social media companies if they fail to comply with Indian laws.

A Parliamentary committee on Monday had also grilled Meta officials who appeared before the panel over the issue of algorithmic bias, saying objectionable content like porn is freely available on the platform while "genuine" content was removed.