Facebook Briefly Hides Posts Demanding PM Modi's Resignation, Calls it a Mistake

New Delhi- Few posts demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi were briefly was hidden from public viewing in India by the social media giant Facebook. 

This comes in the time when India is struggling with the ongoing fight against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic with its cases skyrocketing and spiraling out of control with every passing day. India stands as the second-worst COVID-19 affected nation in the world with several reports of the shortcomings of the healthcare infrastructure coming to light. Acute shortages of the supply of medical oxygen, hospital beds, and other life-saving drugs have been reported throughout the country signaling a serious inefficiency in the administration and management of the pandemic. Amid all this crisis, it only natural for people to point their fingers towards their elected representatives to express their feelings. 

It is the second incident where attempts were made to silence the voices of the people critical of the ruling establishment. Twitter had to earlier censor as many as 50 posts in response to the government's orders which were critical of the ruling government for their ways of battling the COVID-19 situation in the country. However, the centre responded by saying that it asked Twitter only to remove the posts which were spreading misinformation and not every post that criticized the government. 

Facebook defended this move by calling it a mistake on their part and denied any involvement of the government in the online censorship of the posts. 

According to reports, the posts containing "#ResignModi" were removed by Facebook from public viewing for a brief period of time. The social media giant defended this move by saying that few of the contents violated the community standard guidelines. The posts which remained blocked for 3-4 hours could not be accessed by people in India but countries like the US, Canada or the UK could easily have an access to it. After the first report of the censorship was out, Facebook retracted from its earlier decision of the posts violating community guidelines and restored it for public viewing. 

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