Security News > 2021 > April > India orders takedowns of social media posts it claims harm fight against raging COVID-19 outbreak

As India battles a surging second wave of COVID-19 cases and severe shortages of medical supplies, the nation's government has told Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to remove social media posts it says may panic its populace with misinformation.

The takedown requests were lodged on Friday, a day before India recorded more than 300,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time ever in 24 hours.

India's previous peak came in September 2020, when cases reached nearly 100,000 cases a day before settling to around 10,000 a day in early 2021.

India recording over 2 lakh cases everyday,shortage of vaccines,shortage of medicines,increasing number of deaths....healthcare system is collapsing...!#ModiMadeDisaster pic.

For now the social media companies have agreed to take down listed posts for Indian users.

In the past the government has disabled 4G and wired internet services for some states, asked Twitter to issue fairly large bans, and filed charges against Amazon Prime India's head of content over scenes in a TV program deemed to be offensive.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/04/26/india_social_media_takedown_orders/