Facebook on Wednesday temporarily blocked posts with a hashtag calling for the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on its platform.
Many users posted that Facebook blocked access to such posts and was displaying the message that read some posts with #ResignModi were hidden as some content goes against "our community guidelines."
Andy Stone, Communications chief for Facebook posted on Twitter saying that "This hashtag has been restored and we are looking into what happened."
In addition, Olivia Solon, Editor, Tech Investigations at NBCNews said that in the latest update Facebook has said, "We temporarily blocked this hashtag by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to, and have since restored it.”
This comes on the heels of the Indian government sending notices to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and others asking to block over 100 posts which seemed to be criticizing the government's handling of the pandemic situation in India.
The hashtag #ResignModi was again trending on Twitter with the hashtag #Anti_India_Facebook.
Moreover, the government claimed that it has directed social media platforms such as Twitter to block close to the posts in order to "prevent obstructions" to the fight against the pandemic and escalation of crimes against public order.
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