India, July 26 -- Whenever a protest spirals into unrest and youth migrate from feed to street, you-Meta-retreat behind a familiar line: that you are merely a platform, not a publisher, making no editorial choices at all. This defence has eroded; for Indian law never granted the unconditional sanctuary found elsewhere in the world.

Dear Meta,

You manage Instagram in India on the implicit consent of some 400 million users, most of them young, and you decide, through opaque weights and undisclosed systems, what they perceive; who they connect with; the very shape of the world outside their window. These impulses originate in Menlo Park-rippling outward into Mumbai-Delhi-Manipur-Kashmir. Whenever a protest spirals into unrest and youth mig...