Hindustan Times / Getty Images
Prime Minister Narendra Modi raises his arms in the air during a public rally to vote for the Assembly of West Bengal in Barasat on April 12, 2021.
Facebook temporarily hid posts calling for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s resignation. This was the platform’s latest foray into a series of controversial decisions affecting freedom of expression in a country facing a full-blown COVID-19 crisis.
On Wednesday, the world’s largest social network announced that posts with the hashtag or the text #ResignModi are “temporarily hidden here” because “some of the content in these posts violates our community standards”. Since the posts were hidden, it is unclear what content violates the rules of a company whose managers have often committed to open expression.
After Facebook hid posts using the hashtag for about three hours, Facebook overturned its decision and allowed users to find and access posts criticized by Modi immediately after that story was posted.
“We accidentally blocked this hashtag temporarily, not because the Indian government asked us to and has since restored it,” Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told BuzzFeed News.
Last week, the Indian government ordered Twitter to block access to more than 50 tweets criticizing Modi’s handling of the pandemic. The Wall Street Journal also reported that by order of the government, Facebook and Instagram had blocked posts about Modi.
The hashtag was hidden in India, according to people who shared screenshots on Twitter and in the US, Canada and England, based on searches from BuzzFeed News.
In February, India enacted new social media and online video regulations that allow the government to require platforms like Facebook and Twitter to remove content that the government deems objectionable.
A spokesman for the Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has not yet responded to a request for comment.
This appears to be the first time Facebook has blocked or hidden calls for a democratically elected world leader to step down and in violation of CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s stated preference to keep content open whenever possible. The ban appears to contradict the principles of a platform once celebrated for its role in sustaining the Arab Spring and sparked a wave of democratic revolts that spurred Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and the autocratic rulers of several other countries in the region fell.
Despite signs that normal life would return earlier this year, India is currently in the grip of the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak, with increasing criticism of its leader.
“The Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken on the difficult task of organizing a pandemic response in a poor country like India and made it impossible,” India-based Caravan wrote on Tuesday.
This is what happens when you search for the hashtag #ResignModi on Facebook (at least in India).
5:58 p.m. – April 28, 2021
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Earlier this year, India’s cases collapsed and most parts of the country resumed normal life. But from March the cases increased. More than 360,000 people were infected and 3,293 died yesterday, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The crisis has marginalized the country’s healthcare system and people who die in their cars are trying to gain access to hospitals in Delhi. Primary rallies and religious gatherings have spread the virus as the Modi government struggles to respond.
On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that the US would accelerate shipments to the country and lift export restrictions on the raw materials used to manufacture vaccines.
Facebook’s links with the Modi government and its Bharatiya Janata party have been under scrutiny since the Wall Street Journal announced in August that the company’s top political official in India was facing punishment for a prominent BJP member and at least three other Hindu nationalists for violating hate speech from Facebook has protected rules. The employee, Ankhi Das, Facebook’s political director for India and South and Central Asia, later apologized and resigned after sharing a Facebook post describing Indian Muslims as a “degenerate community” for whom “nothing as purity of religion and implementation of the Sharia matter “.
“In a highly politicized environment and an ongoing emergency, it is very worrying that Facebook is not being more transparent about this and not commenting,” said Evelyn Douek, a professor at Harvard Law School. “This seems to be a central political speech at a very critical time.”
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