Video Shared During Jantar Mantar Student Protest Was Temporarily Restricted; Meta Says It Was a Technical Error

New Delhi: A video shared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the student protests at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar has sparked fresh debate after it was temporarily restricted on social media in India. The Prime Minister had recorded the selfie-mode video to address the youth and posted it on his official social media accounts. However, the video later became unavailable to users in India, triggering political and technological concerns.

According to reports, when users clicked on the “See Why” option attached to the video late at night, they received a message stating that the content had been “restricted in India in response to a legal request.” The notification raised questions about the circumstances under which the restriction had been imposed.

Responding to the controversy, Meta clarified that the Prime Minister’s video had not been restricted due to any legal directive but was mistakenly limited because of a technical error. The company said the issue was identified promptly, corrected, and the video was restored for users.

Meanwhile, the Union Government’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has taken serious note of the incident and has summoned Meta’s and Instagram’s global executives to seek an explanation. The ministry is expected to ask how such a restriction appeared on the Prime Minister’s official content and what safeguards the company will implement to prevent similar incidents in the future.

The episode has once again intensified the debate over the accountability, transparency, and content moderation practices of global social media platforms. Experts believe that even unintended technical errors involving content of significant public importance can create confusion and raise concerns about platform governance.

Meta has maintained that the restriction resulted from an inadvertent technical mistake and has since been rectified. The Central Government is expected to review the company’s explanation before deciding on any further course of action.