The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has received Meta’s response to its notice over advertisements and content allegedly promoting or facilitating child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) on Instagram and is reviewing the company’s submission, a government official familiar with the matter said on Sunday.
“We have received Meta’s response and are reviewing it,” the official said.
MeitY had on July 4 directed Meta, on the insistence of Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, to immediately disable all Instagram advertisements and content allegedly promoting or facilitating CSEAM, following a BBC Eye investigation that reported finding around 30 unique advertisements allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material on the platform.
The ministry had also given the company seven days to explain how such advertisements were allowed to appear on Instagram. The deadline for Meta’s response was July 11.
Ahead of submitting its response to MeitY, Meta in a blog post on July 7 rejected suggestions that it knowingly targeted users with CSEAM-related advertisements in India.
“It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we’d knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest in children,” the company said. “Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over 4 million of these accounts last year.”
{{/usCountry}}“It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we’d knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest in children,” the company said. “Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over 4 million of these accounts last year.”
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Meta said it automatically removed more than four million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram globally last year, alongside 36 million pieces of content for child exploitation. It also said AI-based detection tools led to the removal of 160,000 accounts in India over the past six months.
At the time, a MeitY official had said the blog post was not the explanation sought by the ministry and that Meta was still required to submit a detailed response by July 11.
According to the BBC investigation, Instagram displayed advertisements containing phrases such as “rape video” and “child video” that directed users to Telegram channels allegedly selling child sexual abuse material. The BBC said Meta removed several advertisements, disabled multiple accounts and blocked violating URLs after the findings were flagged.
Meta has said its enforcement systems had identified and disabled several violating advertisements and accounts even before the BBC cases were brought to its attention. Its subsequent investigation, the company said, led to further advertisements being removed, accounts being disabled and URLs linked to policy-violating content being blocked.
The company also acknowledged limitations in its enforcement systems, saying “no system is perfect” and that criminals continue to try to exploit its platforms, including its advertising systems.