New Delhi: The Union government will decide its next course of action against Meta after reviewing the company's formal response to a notice over the alleged promotion of child sexual exploitative and abuse material (CSEAM) through paid advertisements on Instagram, Information Technology Secretary S Krishnan said on Thursday.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued the notice on Saturday, directing Instagram to disable advertisements and content that promote or facilitate access to child sexual abuse material.
Speaking on the sidelines of the CII GCC Business Summit, Krishnan said the government would examine Meta's official response before taking any further steps.
"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," he said.
The action followed directions from Union Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who asked MeitY officials to summon Meta and seek an explanation over advertisements allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material on Instagram.
The regulatory scrutiny comes after a BBC investigation alleged that Meta's recommendation algorithm had promoted videos containing child sexual abuse material and that paid advertisements with search terms such as "rape video" and "child video" directed users to Telegram channels where such content was allegedly being sold.
In response, Meta published a blog on Tuesday outlining its efforts to combat child exploitation across its platforms. The company described child exploitation as a "horrific crime" and said it works aggressively to detect and remove such content using artificial intelligence and human reviewers.
Meta said its advertising review system screens advertisements before publication and continues to monitor them after they go live, while allowing users to report policy violations.
The company acknowledged that no system is capable of identifying every violation but said it would continue investing in technology, strengthen its ad review processes and work with law enforcement agencies to tackle offenders.
Rejecting suggestions that it deliberately targets such advertisements, Meta said it uses technology to identify accounts showing suspicious behaviour involving children.
According to the company, more than four million suspicious accounts and 36 million pieces of child exploitation content were removed globally last year. It also said AI-powered tools had removed around 1,60,000 accounts in India over the past six months for posting suspicious links associated with exploitative activity. Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
