Meta has agreed to report instances of child sexual abuse to appropriate law enforcement agencies in India as the Centre increases pressure on online platforms to strengthen safeguards for children.
Government sources cited in the report said children’s online safety was a “fundamental principle” for social media platforms operating in India and was “non-negotiable”. Meta’s decision was described as a first step towards making online platforms safer for children.
The government is also holding discussions with other platforms on proactively identifying, removing and reporting harmful content. It has warned that action could be taken against platforms that fail to introduce adequate measures to protect children online.
Meta Faces Scrutiny Over CSAM on Instagram
The development follows regulatory scrutiny of Meta’s platforms, particularly Instagram, over allegations concerning the circulation and promotion of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM.
The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is conducting an inquiry into allegations that paid advertisements linked to child sexual exploitation and abuse material appeared on Instagram. Senior Meta India executives were summoned in September as part of the inquiry, following a BBC investigation in July alleging that Instagram advertisements were directing users towards Telegram channels offering CSAM for sale.
The allegations also led the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to summon Meta executives.
Meta subsequently said it had removed the violating advertisements, disabled associated accounts and blocked URLs linked to policy-violating content. The company said it automatically removed more than 4 million suspicious accounts globally over the previous year and approximately 1.6 lakh accounts in India during the preceding six months.
Meta said automated and manual reviews are used to identify advertisements that violate its policies. It also acknowledged that no review system can detect every violation.
Proposal for Conducting Cyber Crisis Drill, Tabletop Exercise (TTEx) & CCMP Readiness Exercise
Government Seeks Stronger Content Safeguards
The matter later expanded beyond the NCPCR inquiry, with the National Human Rights Commission seeking reports from government agencies and Delhi Police. The NHRC also sought clarity on whether mandatory reporting obligations under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act had been followed.
In August, the government held several rounds of discussions with Meta’s global leadership over CSAM, deepfakes, unlabelled AI-generated material and recommendation algorithms.
The Centre asked Meta to strengthen CSAM detection, increase human oversight of content moderation and improve safeguards for Indian-language and local-context content. Officials also questioned why harmful AI-generated material could reappear after being flagged and why unlabelled synthetic content remained accessible.
The government maintained that its engagement with Meta was intended to enforce Indian laws rather than restrict legitimate speech.
Wider Questions Over Protection of Young Users
Meta has also faced scrutiny over other content moderation issues in India. In July, Facebook temporarily restricted a video posted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Meta later attributed the incident to an error in its AI-powered content moderation systems, and the episode resulted in an apology from the company.
The latest development comes after Meta agreed to a settlement worth up to $18 billion in the US over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children and teenagers.
As part of that settlement, Meta agreed to safeguards for teenage users in participating US jurisdictions, including limits on daily usage, overnight access restrictions, stronger parental controls, age-assurance measures and an option for a non-algorithmic feed.
The settlement has also prompted questions about whether similar protections should be extended to users in India, where stronger age-based safeguards for social media users are separately under consideration.
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