The Government has debunked an article claiming that Meta has automated content blocking to comply with the government’s three-hour takedown requirement and that content blocks surged during the Delhi protests. The Fact Check Unit of the Press Information Bureau (PIB) called the article misleading.

The Unit added that to expedite action against unlawful content, the takedown time was reduced to 3 hours from earlier 36 hours by an amendment in February this year to the IT Intermediaries Rules 2021. PIB said that during the period from March to July this year, over two URLs were sent for takedown, out of which around 82 per cent were sent by states.

It also said that in the last two years, majority of the unlawful content intimated by Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre – I4C were related to transnational financial frauds, Child Sexual Abuse Material and offences related to women and children.