Gaming, Deepfakes and Sovereignty Threats: Meta Restricted 5.4 Million Items in India
Online gaming, deepfakes of prominent figures, threats to sovereignty and integrity, gender-based harassment and promoting enmity between groups drove Meta to restrict over 5.4 million items in India in January–June 2026. India ranks second worldwide after Indonesia. Meta said most were automated restrictions, including identical copies, required by the amended IT Rules. India has 403 million Facebook users and 481 million on Instagram.
Content tied to online gaming, deepfakes of prominent figures, threats to India's sovereignty and integrity, gender-based harassment and promoting enmity between groups drove Meta to restrict access to more than 5.4 million items in India between January and June 2026, according to the company's latest Content Restrictions Report.
The figure makes India the second-largest source of such restrictions on Facebook and Instagram worldwide, after Indonesia.
Gaming, Deepfakes and Sovereignty Threats
The company said the "large majority" were cases where it was "obligated to proactively restrict content, including instances of restricting 100% identical copies of content, at scale and in country, based on local law requirements such as the amended Information Technology Rules."
"Due to the unprecedented nature of this effort, we continue to test and refine our implementation of these measures," Meta said.
It added that it restricted over 20,000 further items on Threads, which are counted separately from the country total.
The Scale in Context
India had 1,114.17 million internet subscribers at the end of June 2026, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), up from 1,092.79 million in March.
That user base spans one of the world's most diverse populations.
The 2011 Census recorded 19,569 raw mother tongue returns, grouped into 121 languages, including the 22 scheduled languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
The same Census counted six major religious communities:
- Hindu (79.8%)
- Muslim (14.2%)
- Christian (2.3%)
- Sikh (1.7%)
- Buddhist (0.7%)
- Jain (0.4%)
And 705 ethnic groups notified as Scheduled Tribes, numbering 104 million people.
Content moderation across this many languages and communities means categories such as promoting enmity between groups and threats to sovereignty apply to a very large and varied body of posts.
From Thousands to Millions
Globally, Meta said restrictions under local law across Facebook and Instagram fell slightly, from over 27.8 million in the second half of 2025 to over 27.1 million in the first half of 2026.
It attributed the decline mainly to a continued drop in automated geoblocking in Indonesia, which "offset a surge in India resulting from amended Information Technology Rules that expanded content restriction requirements."
Indonesia still accounted for over 20 million items, mostly gambling content restricted automatically under local law.
India's 5.4 million items represent roughly one in five restrictions worldwide in the period.
Who Sends the Requests
I4C, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, runs the Sahyog portal, through which authorised agencies send Section 79(3)(b) notices to platforms.
The Karnataka High Court upheld the portal on September 24, 2025, dismissing a challenge by X Corp.
The Legal Framework
The online gaming category follows the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, which received Presidential assent on August 22, 2025 and bans online money games.
The Act and its rules came into force on May 1, 2026.