For a few hours in late July, one of the most-watched persons in the world vanished from two of the world's biggest platforms. Narendra Modi had put up a vertical video on July 23, his first real attempt to talk to Gen Z in its own idiom, addressing protesting students during the 36-day churn over the NEET-UG 2026 mess and promising harder laws against paper leaks. Meta's machinery took it off Facebook and Instagram. Then put it back on. The company attributed the temporary pull-out to a technical error. Nobody in GoI bought it.
The row that has followed is not really about the 5-6 hrs that the video clip stayed down. It's about a bill of grievances that has been piling up for a while. Meta's global team was called in this time. The parliamentary standing committee on IT gave the company three days to apologise, or face a review of its safe harbour, a legal provision that protects internet and social media platforms from being sued for things their users post, provided the platforms remove illegal content when told to do so.
