A BBC Eye invbestigation has found that Instagram has been running paid advertisements “promoting” child sexual abuse material in India. (Photo: Pexels)
The Central government has issued a notice to Meta, ordering it to take down the Instagram ads promoting child sexual abuse content, sources in the administration said.
Issuing the notice over Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said, “MeitY has ordered Instagram to disable all ads and content promoting and facilitating access to CSEAM.”
The ministry has also demanded a detailed explanation within 7 days.
A Meta spokesperson said the company “has a zero tolerance policy for soliciting or sharing CSAM, including in ads”.
“We use advanced AI technology to proactively detect violating content and individuals, but we are in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5 billion users and try to evade our detection. That is why our expert teams are constantly working to improve our defenses, develop new technology to root out predators, block links to violating websites, and share intelligence with other companies so they can take action too,” a Meta spokesperson said.
A BBC Eye investigation has found that Instagram has been running paid advertisements “promoting” child sexual abuse material in India.
The ads, as detected by the BBC World Service, use phrases such as “rape video” and “child video” and direct users to channels on the messaging app Telegram, where they can buy the material for as little as Rs 99.
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Following the publication of the probe report, the Central government summoned representatives of Instagram’s parent company, Meta.
It is to be noted that ads on Instagram can reach the users only after their moderation technology approves them.
As the BBC flagged one such controversial ad to Instagram, the platform took more than 24 hours to say that the post was not violating its “community guidelines”.
When the BBC approached Meta for comment, it stated that it had already taken down several advertisements and suspended related accounts that were posting them.
— with inputs from the BBC