New Delhi: Social media giant Facebook on Thursday said it had temporarily blocked a hashtag calling for the Prime Minister’s resignation “by mistake” and that it wasn’t done on government orders.
The development comes amid reports that social media companies are being asked to remove posts that are critical of the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We temporarily blocked this hashtag by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to, and have since restored it,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.
According to reports, a hashtag calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefly blocked on Facebook on Wednesday. Users searching the hashtag were given a message that said such posts were “temporarily hidden here” because “some content in those posts goes against our Community Standards”.
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