Facebook, Instagram Handles Of Chinar Corps Blocked Since January 28

The Facebook handle @ChinarCorpsIA had over 24,000 followers, and over 23,000 likes, and is even tagged as a “government organisation”. The Instagram account had around 43,300 followers, and is named ChinarCorpsIA. There were 2,619 posts on the Instagram handle, and it was following 22 people. It identified itself stating, “Welcome to the Official Account of Chinar Corps, Indian Army.”

Both the social media platforms are owned by Facebook’s parent company, Meta Platforms.

Officials said that the handles were blocked from January 28, and no reason was provided. They added that they had written to Facebook immediately after the development but received no response till Tuesday. Facebook did not respond even after officials in Delhi wrote to them.

It seems to be a “coordinated campaign” an official said, as there was no unusual activity. Sources called it as part of “information warfare”, stating that this has happened earlier as well, when last year some social media accounts were blocked for a few days. They said that sometimes the pages might be reported by a large group of people—hinting at pages being reported from people based in Pakistan—as part of a “coordinated” campaign, which can result in the page being suspended.

Sources also said that neither Facebook nor Instagram had mentioned any specific post by the Chinar Corps that violated their rules.

Officials suggested that the content on these two platforms was similar to what they post on Twitter, and was in line with how official content is shared. Each of the posts is vetted before being put out, officials said, and the official handles are careful that nothing objectionable is shared from these handles.

Officials said they were surprised that the handles were blocked, but even more so about the fact that Facebook has not yet responded to queries on the issue. But they were hopeful that the issue would be resolved soon.

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