Policy

Facebook briefly censors, then restores, #ResignModi posts

Facebook
Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images

Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone said Wednesday that the company had restored posts with the hashtag #ResignModi, which call for the resignation of India's prime minister, that had been temporarily blocked by the social network.

"This hashtag has been restored, and we are looking into what happened," Stone said. Later, Stone said the company had blocked the hashtag "by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to."

In its initial messages to users, Facebook said that the hashtag was being blocked because "some content in those posts violates our community standards." The apparent censorship spurred outrage that Facebook might be cowing to pressure from the Indian government, which recently pushed Twitter to block tweets critical of the government's handling of COVID-19.

This is not the first time Facebook has faced such accusations. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on Facebook's former head of policy in India, who was a vocal supporter of Modi and who former employees say stood in the way of efforts to apply Facebook's hate speech rules to violent posts by prominent Hindu nationalists in the country.

This story was updated at 9:24 pm ET to include Stone's updated statement.

Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

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Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

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Photo: Noah Berger/Getty Images for Amazon Web Services

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