Govt examines Meta’s response on Instagram CSAM ads, vows ‘appropriate action’ after review, says IT secretary

Meta's reply to the government notice over child sexual abuse material (CSAM) ads on Instagram has been received by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and is being examined, IT Secretary S Krishnan said on Monday, adding that appropriate action will be taken after examination.

Krishnan said that Meta's reply to the government notice has been received. "On the CSAM content, we had issued a notice to Meta, and the reply has been received. It is currently under examination," Krishnan said.

The reply was received by the IT Ministry on Saturday, which was the last due day for the reply. "And based on an examination of the reply, appropriate action would be taken," Krishnan said.

A media investigation claimed Instagram served advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material and directing users to external messaging platforms, raising questions about the effectiveness of Meta’s advertising review process.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) responded by issuing a notice to the company, asking how such advertisements were approved despite its moderation safeguards. It directed Meta to immediately remove the reported advertisements, explain its review process and detail the steps being taken to prevent similar incidents. The ministry also sought information on how advertisements are vetted before publication and what additional measures are being introduced to strengthen enforcement against child sexual exploitation content.

Within a few days of the notice, Meta outlined its efforts to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) across its apps, highlighting AI-powered detection and large-scale enforcement actions, and, in a blogpost, promised to continue investment in technology and resources to keep young people safe and strengthen its ad review processes.

Meta says "categorically inaccurate"

Meta also sought to rebut suggestions that its systems intentionally surfaced such advertisements. “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. 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,” it said last week.

Addressing the controversy in a blog post, Meta said: “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.”