The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has formally ordered Meta to revamp its core algorithms and publish a detailed compliance roadmap. The official mandate is to stem the flow of deepfakes, coordinated propaganda and various types of illegal or manipulated digital content across the tech giant’s globally popular social media platforms. Government officials have asked corporate representatives to beef up content moderation systems, work fast to remove illegal content flagged by the government and adhere to the regulations for data-localisation and close hands-on cooperation with specialized government Quick Response Teams to catch deepfakes, morphed images, and misleading posts.
The strict directives were issued during a series of high-level meetings between senior government officials and key executives of Meta. The multinational company was open to the problem of the organization's current content governance and safety processes which needs to be fixed and also described a number of technical solutions to solve the problem of deepfakes, synthetic media and other online harms. Meta's technical team shared their current state-of-the-art approach to addressing such content. Ministry officials then formally asked for specific algorithmic changes to stop propaganda, manipulated photos and illegal material from spreading. Both sides have agreed to keep talks going until all regulatory problems are addressed to the satisfaction of the government, said industry sources.
Furthermore, at the same time, the administrative body is looking at the broader situation through a legal prism to find possible pathways forward. Government officials confirmed that Meta has been formally instructed to take immediate action on deepfake claims, while a legal opinion on further punitive or regulatory action will be produced after the outcome of these ongoing meetings. The core legal question being discussed is whether Meta is already in full compliance with statutory intermediary rules or if it is a clear violation of Indian law for its platform approach and is now being studied by the government legal teams.
This major regulatory decision occurs in response to an administrative summons to Meta’s top management. The summons followed an incident where Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Facebook post addressing the young people and calling for strict action to be taken against competitive examination paper leaks was briefly blocked on the platform. And although the US-based social media company offered an explanation for the sudden blocking of the content from the site and issued a formal apology, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had strong views on the issue. Company representatives had said that the official content was simply removed in error and was then restored to the public sphere, but the episode has definitely opened up a much deeper institution-wide consciousness of digital platform accountability and algorithm transparency in the country.
