New Delhi: Meta’s executives will meet officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on 5 and 6 August, IT Secretary S. Krishnan told reporters on the sidelines of an event, as the ministry examines the tech giant’s handling of content takedowns, child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and compliance with Indian regulations.
Krishnan said he did not have the names of those attending or confirmation of who from the company would be present.
The meetings follow a notice the ministry issued to Meta and come after the brief removal of a video from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Facebook account, posted on 23 July, which the company said had been taken down in error and later restored, attributing it to a technical issue.
During the window the post was unavailable, users in India were shown a notice indicating the content was unavailable following a legal request. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology took up the issue on the preceding day, with Meta representatives present.
Krishnan said the meetings would cover a range of issues, beginning with the framework under which Meta operates. “There is a clearer understanding of what India’s law is on these issues, clearer understanding of what compliance should look like, and clearer understanding of how they intend to sort of make sure that the compliance happens,” he said.
He added that the ministry was aware that the issue of child sexual abuse material had been raised in the standing committee meet. The extent to which synthetically-generated content was being addressed would also come up, he said, along with safeguards for verified accounts of prominent personalities whose content is taken down.
“We would like to understand from them as to why some of these things have not been working the way they are supposed to work and what are the challenges,” he said. “These are some of the leading technology companies in the world and they should have technology which they can actually make work.”
On whether Meta would issue a formal apology, Krishnan said he could not speak on that.
Asked about the Parliamentary panel, he said: “I’m not supposed to speak about what happened in the Parliamentary panel. That is up to the panel to actually mention.” He said representatives of Meta were present and that the panel’s concerns would have been conveyed.
On whether the IT ministry shared the view among some panel members that legal action should be taken against Meta, he said he could not speak for what transpired in the committee. “As far as the IT ministry is concerned, we have already issued our notices and that is a legal step. I think there is a legal action process which is ongoing.”
Asked whether MeitY would introduce a law to curb CSAM and deepfakes, he said: “No comments.”
A separate query on account access referred to a date-of-birth prompt some users had seen, which Meta linked to preparation for regulations in India. Krishnan said this might be in the context of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, which the ministry was working on, towards a deadline, but that it would have to be checked.
On draft amendments to the IT rules, Krishnan said the ministry was still deciding both the substance and the form the changes would take.
“We will have to see which elements we sort of look at,” he said, adding that in case the ministry was looking at a new statute, it would have to decide “whether we should take it into an act or whether we should do it only by rules”.
On separate legislation for digital arrests, he said the Solicitor General had made a mention in the courts and that it is for the ministry to look at. He said notifications for ISM 2.0 would come shortly, with details being worked out as the scheme was large, and that the next tranche of ECMS (Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme) approvals would follow shortly after a few meetings.
On usernames for messaging apps, Krishnan said the issue applied to all platforms, not only WhatsApp, and had two dimensions—the possibility of impersonation, and the privacy angle, as some users wished to preserve privacy. He said responses had been received and the ministry would examine how to balance both.
Asked whether there could be a common set of standards across platforms, he said this would have to be examined. “Some form of regulation will have to come in at some point. And probably the time is now to start thinking about it,” he said, adding that the ministry was looking at feedback and would take a final call.
He clarified he had not said a uniform set of standards.
On AI, Krishnan said standards and a framework would be needed for evaluation to be used on a wider basis, and that this was further down the line. “Today, what is happening in the United States in terms of access to AI resources or AI models is in reality regulation in some form,” he said.
The remarks came at the launch of Voice of India, described as India’s first independent multimodal AI evaluation platform, announced by Josh Talks AI in collaboration with AI4Bharat at IIT Madras. The platform has been built to provide independent evaluation across multimodal AI systems to help enterprises, developers and policymakers make deployment decisions. Krishnan said the event was also about measurement, and that the initiative was one step toward it.
The launch brought together representatives from government, academia and industry, including Krishnan; Professor Mitesh Khapra, co-founder of AI4Bharat and Professor at IIT Madras; and Supriya Paul and Shobhit Banga, co-founders of Josh Talks AI.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)