New Delhi: On August 5, Meta Platforms’ Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan apologised for briefly restricting a post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in July. But amid this apology, Meta has unleashed a heightened censorship spree.“I apologised to the minister on behalf of Meta for the error restricting PM Modi’s post,” Kaplan said after meeting with Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.Last month, Ministry of Information and Technology had summoned Meta executives after Facebook briefly restricted a post by Modi. Meta said the post had been blocked inadvertently because of an operational error.Last week, Hyderabad Police also registered a case against Meta India head Arun Srinivas over videos posted on Facebook that allegedly depicted Modi in an “abusive manner”.Meta has initiated a series of takedowns on a growing list of journalists, politicians, media organisations and political commentators who today find their content or accounts restricted, often with little explanation.On August 6, former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said Meta had restricted his Instagram account in India. He said he had repeatedly sought an explanation from the company but received no response.The Wire has faced multiple restrictions in recent months.Facebook and Instagram on August 7 withheld The Wire‘s posts on Nikhil Gupta’s sentencing hearing in a US federal court being postponed because the man he allegedly conspired to have killed, Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, has requested to be present in the hearing. Recently, Instagram withheld The Wire‘s post sharing its article on how the Nah Welfare Society alleged that the Chinese Army has been encroaching on Indian territory near the Taksing village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Upper Subansiri district.Also read: Nijjar, Bishnoi, Satluj and Parliament: What The Wire’s Censored Social Media Posts Talk AboutIn July, Meta removed two of The Wire’s reports from Facebook and Instagram without prior notice, including a video explainer about the US indictment of jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi.Posts by Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) members and other protestors too have faced erasure from Instagram at a chilling pace, following meetings between the company’s leadership and the Union government. Fact-checker and co-founder of AltNews.in, Mohammed Zubair and political content creator Shrishti Khanna have also alleged that their posts saw takedowns and suspensions. The Indian Youth Congress, CJP spokesperson Saurav Das, and the news portal Scroll.in and The Hindu are among others whose posts have been blocked in India.Meta has restricted access to The Hindu’s report in India on Kashmir pellet victim Insha Mushtaq from its platform, Instagram. Scroll’s Instagram post on the plight of Kashmir’s pellet victims awaiting compensation was also censored. The online news organisation also faced digital restriction on stories about a meat ban in Amritsar and a US case about an alleged plot to kill a Khalistani leader.Software Freedom Law Centre, a non-profit legal and policy organisation that works at the intersection of technology, law, and civil liberties has a Free Speech Tracker which already documented more than 80 instances of protest-related content takedowns and account restrictions.This pattern has drawn flak and questions over whether Meta is applying its content-moderation policies consistently, particularly when the content concerns the government or political dissent.In July, the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said users documenting student protests in Delhi were reporting that Instagram reels were being labelled “sensitive”, while some creators reported an unexplained collapse in their reach. The organisation called on Meta to disclose whether the restrictions were linked to government demands, including those made through the Sahyog portal or under the Information Technology Act.Furthermore, restrictions that are difficult to detect or appeal, including reduced distribution, warnings placed over protest footage and posts being made unavailable only to users in India. Users say that this can make a particular type of political content harder to discover without giving its publishers or audiences a clear explanation of what rule was violated.This comes as the government has tightened its expectations of social-media platforms. Under the 2026 amendments to the IT Rules, platforms have been given a much shorter window to comply with government orders to remove content. The Indian Youth Congress has said Meta alone restricted more than 28,000 pieces of content in India in the first six months of 2025 following government requests.Meta, meanwhile, has described at least some recent high-profile restrictions as operational errors. But what is intriguing is that when the account of a sitting prime minister was briefly restricted, the company apologised to the government within weeks. For the Prime Minister’s opposition – politicians, journalists and protesters, who say their content has been restricted – explanations and avenues of appeal appear nearly impossible to avail.