Social media giant Facebook on Tuesday apologised to Bengaluru-based environmental activist Leo Saldanha and restored a comment he had posted on the film Padmaavat , which it had blocked following a third-party complaint from the film’s distributor.
Mr. Saldanha had posted a comment criticising the film, which Facebook removed on February 2 after the multinational corporate distributor cited copyright violations. He was informed by the social media company that he had to get permission from the distributor if he wanted to repost the content.
Following this, Mr. Saldanha wrote an open letter to Facebook and the distributor arguing that his post was only a critique of the film and that he had the fundamental right to express his opinion. He termed the incident an “attack by the corporation on freedom of expression”.
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Subsequently, Facebook apologised to Mr. Saldanha and restored the comment on Tuesday morning. “This content had been removed in error in connection with an intellectual property report submitted by a third party. We apologise for the mistake,” an mail from Facebook said.
Mr. Saldanha, in a statement, said: “The fact that Facebook pulled down my comment, knowing well the complaint came from another corporate distributor of a movie... is an example of a frightening prospect of such corporatised control of what we say, and who we end up being. While I acknowledge that Facebook has released my post and apologised, I really feel this incident needs to be deeply problematised to understand and appreciate the latent threat to democratic spaces, including on social media, when they are corporate-controlled.”