Government directions to restrict online content witnessed a dramatic surge between March and July this year, with nearly 1.95 lakh blocking orders sent to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, according to data accessed by The Indian Express.
The figures mean that, on average, one blocking order was issued every 68 seconds, or nearly 1,275 orders every day. The sharp rise assumes significance as the period coincided with the students’ protests against examination leaks at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, which began in June and continued until July 25.
Instagram received the largest share, with nearly one lakh blocking orders, accounting for more than half of the total. Facebook received around 80,000 orders, while YouTube received nearly 15,000, reports Indian Express.
Together, the two Meta-owned platforms: Instagram and Facebook accounted for roughly nine out of every 10 orders issued to the three companies. The orders, many of which were issued through the Home Ministry’s Sahyog portal, can cover hundreds of individual posts, pieces of content or accounts.
The scale of the increase becomes clearer when compared with the previous year. RTI records obtained by The Indian Express showed that between October 2024 and October 2025, only 2,312 blocking orders were sent to 19 online platforms through Sahyog, an average of about six orders a day.
A senior government official told the Indian Express newspaper that a “considerable share” of the latest orders were issued during the student protests as they gathered momentum, particularly on Instagram.
The report said Meta has integrated its API (Application Programming Interface) with the Sahyog portal to meet the government’s requirement of removing flagged content within three hours.
Under the system, content identified through government directions uploaded on the portal can be automatically removed from Meta platforms without a separate human review by the company.
Digital rights activists have raised concerns over the arrangement, arguing that automated takedowns could leave little room for platforms to examine whether a particular government direction meets legal requirements.
Apar Gupta, advocate and founder-director of the Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation, said an automated system could turn a conditional legal obligation into automatic compliance. He questioned whether anyone at the platform checks the authority issuing an order, its legal basis or the reasons cited for the takedown.
According to information shared by users on social media, the restrictions appeared to affect several posts supporting the students’ protests, criticism of the government’s ethanol fuel-blending policy and content relating to the West Bengal Assembly elections, besides deepfakes and other material.
The surge in takedown orders also comes against the backdrop of tighter government rules. In February, the IT Ministry amended the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, reducing the compliance window for certain government-directed takedowns from the earlier 24-36 hours to just 2-3 hours. With India having more than 600 million social media users, the growing scale of government takedown requests has opened a wider debate over online regulation, freedom of expression and the safeguards needed before content is removed.
