Indian Facebook Inc. users today lashed out at the company after they found that any posts featuring a hashtag asking for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi were hidden.

When people tried to post content asking for the man to step down, they received a message saying that the post was hidden to keep the community safe. The hashtag #ResignModi was seemingly verboten, even though the COVID-19 pandemic presently raging through India has caused many people to question who is running the country. Such criticism does not violate any of Facebook’s policies.

The question is, was Facebook under pressure from the Indian government to take such action? It seems likely. Just days ago reports emerged that the Indian government had ordered Facebook along with Twitter Inc. to take down content that criticized the handling of the pandemic.

This is what happens when you search for the hashtag #ResignModi on Facebook (at least in India). pic.twitter.com/Rzehg3meB8

— Shivam Vij (@DilliDurAst) April 28, 2021

“Certain people are misusing social media to create panic in society,” India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement. It was reported that Facebook, Instagram, as well as Twitter, all did what they were asked to do, eliciting a deluge of doubt over the integrity of social media companies.

The recent blockage, it seems, was only perpetrated in India since Facebook users in other countries said the content was available to them. In all, reports state there were more than 12,000 posts that were hidden. Facebook restored them after a few hours, but it’s still a bad look for the company when much of the world is screaming out about how social media companies are manipulating the zeitgeist with their actions.

“We temporarily blocked this hashtag by mistake, not because the Indian government asked us to, and have since restored it,” a spokesperson for Facebook said, a statement that likely won’t appease critics who believe social media outfits are far from being neutral.

Photo: Ninian Reid/Flickr