2 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Aug 3, 2026 09:25 PM IST
Written by Neeta Sharma
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg will have to apologise after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s video was briefly withheld by Facebook in India, a senior leader of the ruling BJP, who heads the parliamentary panel on communications, has said.
BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, who is the Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, said that these algorithms are driven by “foreign powers” and that “safe harbour protection should be withdrawn from these platforms if they do not act according to the law of the country”.
The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) had earlier summoned Meta’s global policy heads over the same incident, The Indian Express had reported, quoting sources.
The government came down heavily on all social media platforms for pulling down the Prime Minister’s video for five hours, Dubey said.
Sources told The Indian Express that the top chiefs of all social media platforms had apologised and explained to the government that the algorithms detect deepfake videos and delete them automatically. “In all likelihood, the PM’s video also got deleted by such a move,” they reportedly said. But the government wasn’t convinced by this explanation, according to the sources quotes above.
Nishikant Dubey questions algorithm
“It is a welcome matter that this committee is unanimous on all issues; it is a non-partisan matter. And regarding the algorithm, you should understand the situation that has been created—what Meta India did, what X did, what YouTube did—the country will come to know about it.
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If you look at the algorithmic viewership of the BJP, Congress, Samajwadi Party, and Aam Aadmi Party, the viewership is only 23 million, whereas those who are neither a registered party nor a registered NGO, and are somehow inciting things on the streets, their
algorithm is at 27 million.
All political parties combined are at 23 million… Recently, an anti-reservation forum was formed 5-6 days ago, it is at 7 million, and the reason for this is their [social media platforms] policy that they will give preference to new people, and they will not give preference to older people,” Dubey said.