Newsmaker

For several hours on Sunday, Facebook has shut down the Kisan Ekta Morcha's page, prompting intense condemnation about what farmers claimed was an effort to muzzle their voices.

Kisan Ekta Morcha is a group of farmers, and its Facebook page, less than five days old, has drawn 75,000 supporters. The organization gathers and collects data from numerous farmers' unions and shares it on social media. Reports said the page was reinstated nearly three hours later. After this, the hashtag of #ShameOnFacebook is getting trending on Twitter, as the farmers' group tweeted this with a screenshot.

"Now this is #TooMuchDemocracy. A peaceful protest by #Kissan & @Facebook deletes @Kisanektamorcha Facebook page," the farmers group tweeted. The group also received a restriction on its Instagram account, after which it was not allowed to post videos or photographs.

Kisan Ekta Morcha's Facebook page was inactive at about 7 p.m. and revived at 9.30 p.m., said Baljeet Singh, head of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha IT cell, the alliance of farmers' unions who is leading the protest against the bills for agri-marketing reform.

According to Baljeet Singh, the page was taken down for being in violation of the social media website's community standards.

"We had posted clips countering Narendra Modi's speech from day before yesterday," Singh told HT. "Each of his lies was countered with facts and examples. Subsequently, we started a live broadcast with {Swaraj India's} Yogendra Yadav and in the middle of the broadcast, the page was taken down."

After massive outrage, Facebook later restored the page. "As per our review, our automated systems found an increased activity on the Facebook page www.facebook.com/kisanektamorcha and flagged it as spam, which violates our Community Standards. We restored the page in less than 3 hours when we became aware of the context. The review showed that only the Facebook page was affected by the automated systems while the Instagram account remained unaffected..." said Facebook company spokesperson.