Will await Meta's formal reply and accordingly take a view: IT secretary on CSEAM notice

The government will await Meta's formal reply to notice served over Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram, IT Secretary S Krishnan said on Thursday, adding that a view will be taken basis the response given by the social media company.

The government had issued notice to Meta on Saturday over the issue, with Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordering Instagram to disable all ads and content promoting and facilitating access to CSEAM.

IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had directed MeitY officials to summon Meta over Instagram ads allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material; the ministry demanded an explanation and information from the company on action that had been taken.

Within days of the notice, Meta published a blog outlining its efforts to combat child sexual abuse material across its apps, highlighting AI-powered detection and large-scale enforcement actions. It also promised to continue investment in technology and resources to keep young people safe and strengthen its ad review processes.

In the blog published on Tuesday, the company termed child exploitation a "horrific crime" and asserted that it works aggressively every day to fight such abuse, on and off its platforms.

Asked about the IT Ministry's view on Meta's stance, Krishnan - speaking on the sidelines of CII GCC Business Summit - said: "We will await the formal response to the notice that we have issued, and thereafter we will take a view based on what the response is."

The regulatory scrutiny from the government comes amid a BBC report that alleged Meta's recommendation algorithm had been promoting videos containing child sexual abuse material, exposing serious gaps in the safeguards.

The BBC investigation had also allegedly found advertisements of this nature appearing on Facebook and Instagram, despite Meta's advertising policies explicitly prohibiting nudity and sexually explicit content.

Instagram is alleged to have shown paid advertisements with terms like 'rape video' and 'child video', which directed users to Telegram channels where such content was reportedly on sale.

In Tuesday's blog post, Meta said its advertising review process combines automated systems with human reviewers to detect and remove policy-violating ads, while acknowledging that no system can catch every violation.

Ads are screened before they run and remain subject to continuous review and re-review, with users also able to report suspected violations, according to the company.

"This work is ongoing. Our teams are constantly improving our defences--developing new technology, blocking violating links, and sharing intelligence across the industry--but we know there is more to do. We will continue investing in every resource needed to keep young people safe, strengthen our ad review processes, and work with law enforcement to hold criminals accountable," Meta had said.

Meta detailed the company's ongoing efforts to combat child exploitation across its apps, highlighting AI-powered detection tools, its clearly laid-out policies against child nudity, abuse, and exploitation, and the large-scale enforcement action.

"We're aware of recent news reports about Instagram ads in India that violated our policies against child exploitation. And we want to be clear: we take these concerns seriously, we never want this content on our platforms, and we're committed to improving our efforts to combat it," it noted.

Meta said it was categorically inaccurate to suggest that it deliberately targets ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest.

"Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over four million of these accounts last year," Meta said.

Meta said it has strengthened AI-powered enforcement against child exploitation, with newer systems covering languages spoken by 98% people online.

The company said last year it had removed over four million suspicious accounts and 36 million pieces of child exploitation content globally. In India, AI tools helped remove 1,60,000 accounts in the past six months for posting suspicious links linked to exploitative activity, said the Menlo Park, California-headquartered technology giant which owns popular social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.