India Panel Warns Meta Safe Harbour Could Face Review
Inc42 reported that India’s parliamentary communications panel sought an apology from Mark Zuckerberg and warned that Meta’s Section 79 safe harbour protection could be reconsidered after a Facebook video by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was temporarily unavailable.
A Facebook video from Prime Minister Narendra Modi was unavailable for nearly six hours.
India’s parliamentary communications panel has turned that outage into a direct challenge to Meta’s legal protection as an intermediary.
Inc42 reported that the panel, chaired by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey, sought an unqualified apology from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and warned that the company’s Section 79 safe-harbour protection could be reconsidered.
The panel wrote to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology after the video was removed and later restored.
The escalation is deliberate.
Dubey told reporters that taking down the Prime Minister’s video went beyond an intermediary role and looked like publisher conduct.
He gave Zuckerberg three days to apologise.
If that did not happen, he said, the committee could recommend withdrawing the safe-harbour shield available to social media platforms under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act.
Meta told the committee the post was unavailable for several hours and earlier described the episode as a technical fault.
The video itself addressed students on examination controversies and paper leaks.
It was restored after the outage.
The dispute did not stay confined to one post.
On August 3, officials from MeitY and the Ministry of Home Affairs met representatives from Meta, Google, X, Snapchat and YouTube to discuss social media regulation, content moderation and online safety.
In that setting, the panel also told platforms to remove child sexual abuse material and content aimed at women, linking repeated failures to possible action against intermediary protections.
A second regulatory track is already active.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights issued Meta a notice on July 3 after taking suo motu cognisance of a BBC Eye report on ads tied to child sexual exploitative and abuse material.
Meta replied a week later; the inquiry continues without a final finding.
Separately, the National Human Rights Commission has directed Delhi Police to investigate paid Instagram advertisements promoting CSAM and to check whether Meta and other entities met reporting duties under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The dispute now reaches beyond one unavailable video.
It asks whether a platform error can be treated as evidence that Meta acted like a publisher—and whether that distinction is enough to put Section 79 protection at risk.
