India, Sept. 17 -- The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is questioning Meta's status as an "intermediary" under Indian law, with a top ministry official arguing that the company should instead be treated as a service provider, given that its platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, charge for advertisements and use algorithms to determine what content users see.

Such behaviour, the official said on Wednesday, entails greater responsibility for the content allowed on its platforms. "When you charge to show something on your platform, you are no longer neutral," the official said, adding that platforms that fail to meet the due-diligence requirements under Section 79 of the Information Technology (IT) Act "are...