Meta has apologised after it was threatened with legal action by Indian lawmakers over Mark Zuckerberg’s comments about the country’s general election.
Shivnath Thukral, Meta India’s vice president of public policy, issued an apology on X after a parliamentary committee said it would summon the American company’s representatives to demand apology for Mr Zuckerberg’s remarks “tarnishing India’s image”.
Nishikant Dubey, chair of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communications and Information Technology, had warned that they would recommend legal action if Meta did not issue an apology.
“My committee will summon Meta for this wrong information,” he said. “Wrong information in any democratic country tarnishes the image of that country. That organisation will have to apologise to the Indian parliament and the people here for this mistake.”
Mr Zuckerberg angered the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party with comments he made on American podcaster Joe Rogan’s show on 10 January.
Speaking about how the Joe Biden administration in the US had pressured Facebook to censor information related to the pandemic, he said the “reaction to Covid probably caused a breakdown in trust in a lot of governments around the world”.
Referring to India, the Meta chief remarked that Narendra Modi’s was one of several incumbent governments that lost elections last year due to a breakdown of trust after the of Covid pandemic
“Because, you know, 2024 was a big election year around the world. And, you know, there are all these countries, India, actually, just like a tonne of countries that had elections. And the incumbents basically lost every single one,” he said.
In the 2024 election, India’s ruling party fell short of an outright majority, forcing it to form a coalition government with a few regional allies and enabling Mr Modi to secure a historic third consecutive term as prime minister.
Indian information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Mr Zuckerberg’s claim was “factually incorrect”.
“As the world’s largest democracy, India conducted the 2024 elections with over 640 million voters. People of India reaffirmed their trust in the NDA led by PM Narendra Modi,” he said on X.
He said it was disappointing to see Mr Zuckerberg himself spreading misinformation.
Responding to the minister’s statement, Mr Thukral said: “Mark’s observation that many incumbent parties were not re-elected in 2024 elections holds true for several countries, BUT not India. We would like to apologise for this inadvertent error. India remains an incredibly important country for Meta and we look forward to being at the heart of its innovative future.”
India is the largest market by users for both Facebook and its messenger service WhatsApp.
Big Tech firms like Meta have come under growing scrutiny worldwide in recent years, not least for social media platforms hosting and spreading misinformation, particularly during elections, health crises like the Covid pandemic and social movements.
In 2021, India announced new rules to regulate content on social media, compelling Facebook, WhatsApp and other tech platforms to respond more swiftly to legal demands to remove posts and share details about the originators of messages.
The rules, called the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code, were part of the government’s efforts to tighten the regulation of Big Tech.
The Independent has reached out to Meta for comment.
