The Indian government asked Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to make efforts to speed up the process of taking down objectionable content. The government asked Meta to process complete content takedown orders issued by authorities within one hour of receiving official communication, Moneycontrol reported on Wednesday.
The report said that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, said that the government expects a higher rate of compliance with takedown notices from authorities and that its Silicon Valley peer Google is doing better on this front.
This was discussed in the last week of November between Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg and Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and other senior MeitY Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology officials.
The report said that Clegg met with two other ministers to discuss India's evolving internet policy regulations and Meta's work in the country. The report said Clegg and others were evidently taken by surprise when Vaishnaw said that Google was doing better than Meta in terms of compliance with takedown requests. They believed that Meta was in full compliance with the takedown norms under the IT Rules amendments of last year. Vaishnaw told Meta that it needs more fact-checkers in India in proportion to the country's population and the user base it commands for its social media platforms, like WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
In July of this year, Meta expanded its third-party fact-checking program in India to include NewsMeter, a fact-checker focused on the southern states in the country.
Three top executives exited this year, including its India head, Ajit Mohan, who has now joined Snap Inc as head of the APAC region.