Govt Extracts Apology From Meta For Removing Modi's Reel; Goons Being Sent to Protesters' Homes, Says Rahul Gandhi and Protest Participants; Academic Freedom in India Lowest Since 1900, says V-Dem
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Snapshot of the day
August 5, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia
After the parliamentary standing committee on communications and information technology headed by BJP MP Nishikant Dubey demanded a public apology from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook’s brief takedown of Modi’s first reel after the July 20 march to parliament, the social media giant’s global affairs chief has tendered his apologies. “I apologised to the [electronics and IT] minister [Ashwini Vaishnaw] on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post,” Joel Kaplan has said. Media reports have also cited government sources as saying that Zuckerberg apologised – for Instagram’s inaction on child sexual abuse material ads on Instagram, for “deepfake videos” and “errors in operating the platform”. Meta has not officially said anything about Zuckerberg’s apology.
The standing committee had given Zuckerberg three days to apologise, with The Hindu citing the panel as threatening Meta with a loss of its safe harbour status if the apology did not come. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has summoned Kaplan twice in a week’s time. Meta had said that an inadvertent error caused Modi’s post to go down.
Unnamed government sources now claim Meta’s team admitted that a “lot of money” was paid to boost certain kinds of content and that the company had apologised and regretted its mistakes. This is being presented as revelation. It is also, inconveniently, Meta’s business model.
Alongside four protesters who faced police action from New Delhi, Mumbai, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, leader of Opposition and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that goons were being sent to the homes of young people who had taken part in the protests against the alleged mismanagement of competitive examinations. While the students had faced the media, Union Home Minister Amit Shah or PM Modi “do not have the courage to do so”, Gandhi said and accused the Centre of refusing a discussion in Parliament on the police action.
Among those who spoke was Mumbai-based model Rhiya Ahir, whose 57-second indictment of the Modi ecosystem has travelled faster than most official denials. Also present were women protesters who carried the violence on their bodies: one, a 32-year-old, said she had been injured after pellet guns were fired on July 20; another was allegedly struck by a police officer on her private parts.
Smriti Singh, the Supreme Court lawyer on whose complaint the Noida police lodged a zero FIR against a 15-year-old girl for using expletives against PM Modi, says she has decided to withdraw her complaint because in view of the girl’s apology and the PM’s decision to ‘forgive’ all the ‘misled children’ like herself. That won’t be much consolation for the girl and her family
