Meta Instagram Video Restriction on Visakhapatnam Data Centre Displacement (May 22, 2026)

On May 22, 2026, Instagram restricted a two-minute investigative video by the Environmental Reporting Collective (ERC) that had documented forced land acquisition from Dalit communities in Tarluvada village, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The video, produced by journalists Shamsheer Yousaf and Monica Jha as part of ERC's global "Dirty Data" investigation, was published on May 19, 2026, and went viral within 24 hours, accumulating 2.6 million views before being blocked. Meta/Instagram removed the content following a government notice under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, without providing detailed justification to the creators.

The incident occurred within a larger pattern of systematic displacement: Google's three-campus data centre project near Visakhapatnam spans 480 acres, with 200 acres in Tarluvada historically owned by Dalit families who had received the land through state land distribution programmes in the 1970s. In Visakhapatnam district, 68% of Dalit households own no land; the targeted acquisition disproportionately affects Dalit smallholders, as dominant-caste landowners have been spared acquisition pressure. The restriction of the ERC video exemplifies broader content suppression: at least 20 short videos from 11 accounts criticizing the data centre projects were blocked across Instagram in May-June 2026, prompting criticism from civil liberties organizations including the Human Rights Forum.