New turn as India tells Meta to examine its recommendation algorithms

The Indian government wants Meta to control content during protests. In June, the government had the same problem after a protest at Jantar Mantar.

On 10 October, the IT ministry of India (MeitY) sent Meta an advisory. It tells Meta to examine how Instagram and Facebook recommend and rank content. The ministry wants less incorrect, changed or out of context material. Meta must start immediately and report its work to the ministry. The advisory came during protests in Delhi.

What it asks

The advisory tells Meta to do this:

• Add context to photos and videos of public events when the date, location or source is not clear.
• Find and examine content that many users see and that can cause violence, and send a report on it.
• Show users different and correct information.

The proof

The advisory does not tell the cause. PTI reports that ministry sources tell of a problem found by agencies: the algorithms put some types of content first. The source gives no data.

What the critics say

Apar Gupta of the Internet Freedom Foundation writes that it is a “censorship directive”. Gupta tells that the law does not make Meta do it. Gupta tells that its terms have no connection to the IT Act or the IT Rules. He tells Meta to show each removal and each lower rank that it gives.

Insight: An advisory can steer a feed without a law

The system prompt of Muse, its agent, lets it write adult content. New terms from 30 October let Meta crawl business websites for data for its AI tools. Here the ministry tells Meta to change the content that it recommends. This reads as a try by Meta and the government to write the rules of the recommendation system. Leaders who operate recommendation systems in India can get the same advisory.