Social media company Meta has restored a post on Instagram that news website The Wire claimed had been removed after being reported by Bharatiya Janata Party Information Technology Cell head Amit Malviya.
The owner of the Instagram account, @cringearchivist, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that the post making fun of a man worshipping a statue of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath, has been “silently restored” by Meta.
The post made from the account called Superhumans of Cringetopia had been deleted for violating the Instagram’s “nudity and sexual content” guidelines even though it did not depict any nudity.
While many assumed that the post was removed because of a glitch in some automated system, The Wire on October 10 reported that Meta took it down at the direction of Malviya.
A spokesperson of Meta refused to comment on when the satirical post was restored, Entrackr reported.
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The news website claimed that Malviya has special privileges through an Instagram programme called X-Check that ensures that any posts that he reports are removed from the platform immediately, with “no questions asked” even if they do not violate Meta’s rules.
First reported by the Wall Street Journal in September 2021, this programme reportedly protects at least 5.8 million “high-profile [Facebook and Instagram] accounts” such as “celebrities, politicians and journalists” from Meta’s content takedown procedure that apply to ordinary users.
Meta has claimed that The Wire’s report was “inaccurate and misleading” and appeared to be based on fabricated documents. It has also said that users with X-Check or “Cross Check” privileges cannot have content removed from the platform with no questions asked, as the news website claimed.
“We accept scrutiny of our content decisions, but we fundamentally reject these false allegations based on what we believe to be fabricated evidence,” the social media company added. “We hope that The Wire is the victim of this hoax, not the perpetrator.”
Earlier, when Scroll.in sent Meta follow-up questions regarding content moderation, the company declined to provide “additional inputs”.
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