Takedown orders surge on Meta amid crackdown on posts mocking Modi

The Centre has issued a spate of takedown orders for social media posts on X and Instagram that criticise or mock Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

According to a report in The Hindu, these removals include satirical cartoons of the PM and posts criticising the treatment of minorities. Also targeted were a post by Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia about “a viral mistranscription of a Sanskrit subhashita” by Modi and various accounts opposing the government's new UGC equity regulations.

To comply with these orders, social media companies often ‘geo-block’ the content. This means the posts are hidden from anyone browsing from within India, though they remain viewable to users in other countries. In many cases, the government has targeted accounts operated by people living abroad or content related to specific ministries, like the Ministry of Railways.

Data from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, reveals the scale of this shift. According to The Hindu, between January and June 2025, Meta took down three times as much content due to government orders as it did during the same period in 2023. While Meta provides these transparency statistics, X does not, thus making it harder to track the full extent of the removals on that platform. 

Newslaundry had earlier reported how posts critical of the government, including cartoons, have become frequent targets. For example, when the news outlet The Wire released two satirical music videos featuring the PM, both X and Instagram removed the content. Even when its founding editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, tried to repost one of the cartoons, his post was also taken down.

The Congress party has also reported similar censorship. According to party spokesperson Supriya Shrinate, nine AI-generated satirical posts were removed as of February 14. This happened despite the party labelling the content as AI-generated, which is a requirement under the latest updates to the 2021 IT Rules.

Also, timelines under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act – which governs takedown notices sent by law enforcement agencies – have been shortened from 24–36 hours to just 2–3 hours. While these orders are not technically binding, social media firms are effectively left with no choice but to comply because they do not have adequate time to check whether a post is actually illegal. This creates a major compliance challenge for Meta and X. Separately, takedown orders issued under Section 69A of the IT Act are confidential, which is why official figures on their volume remain unavailable.

On X, meanwhile, users are starting to see more specific notifications. In the past, the company would vaguely mention a “legal demand”, but recently it has begun telling users specifically that their posts were removed under Section 69A of the IT Act, reported The Hindu. However, since Elon Musk took over, X has stopped sharing takedown data, making it nearly impossible for researchers and journalists to track exactly how much content is being censored compared to previous years.

Censorship on social media isn’t just affecting one side of the political spectrum. Recently, high-profile right-wing accounts with substantial followers were withheld in India without explanation. These include the Instagram accounts of activist Sarthak Bhagat, who recently led protests following a murder in Uttam Nagar in Delhi and has over 2.7 lakh followers, and @woke_kashmiri, which has over 2 lakh followers. Interestingly, both accounts had recently been vocal in their criticism of the 2026 UGC equity regulations.

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