New Delhi: Facebook on Wednesday night temporarily blocked the hashtag “#ResignModi”, however, the social media giant stated that it barred the hashtag by mistake and not at the behest of the government, without elaborating.
Users searching for the hashtag were shown a message that said such posts were “temporarily hidden here” because “some content in those posts goes against our community standards”.
The hashtag was later restored after users pointed it out on Twitter. “This hashtag has been restored and we are looking at into what happened,” Facebook Communications Policy Director Andy Stone tweeted.
Social media users were using the hashtag to post content critical of the government, complaining about the mismanagement of the Narendra Modi government asking the prime minister to resign.
The blocking comes a couple of days after the Indian government had asked social media platforms to take down around 100 posts which it believed were done to create panic about the COVID-19 situation in India by “using unrelated, communally sensitive posts and misinformation”.
Following this, microblogging website Twitter had removed over 50 posts from its platform. A majority of these tweets were critical of the Centre’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and had content related to shortage of medicine, beds, mass cremations, and the gathering of crowds at Kumbh Mela.
