In a significant move, the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, has directed officials in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to summon representatives of Meta and seek a detailed explanation on paid advertisements appearing on Instagram that promote child sexual abuse material in India. Sources close to the development said that MeitY will question the company on how such content was allowed on the platform despite existing safeguards and what steps Meta has taken to address the lapse.
This is the latest action by the Centre against the social media giant, coming at a time when authorities are tightening oversight on online child safety and content moderation under the IT Rules.
The government’s directive follows a BBC Eye investigation that uncovered the serious lapses on Instagram. According to the probe, Instagram was running multiple paid ads in India that promoted child sexual abuse material, with the advertisements using explicit terms such as “rape video” and “child video”. These ads reportedly linked users directly to Telegram channels where the illegal content could be purchased for as little as ₹99.
The BBC Eye investigation, conducted through an alias account in India, found that the platform’s algorithm quickly escalated from suggestive adult content to material involving apparent minors, including imagery depicting children as young as seven or eight in sexually suggestive situations.
It was also found that Instagram was showing sexually suggestive contents to users who had not searched for such material. The content included women in revealing clothing posting about food, weather and daily life in India, and adding sexual innuendo in their posts. When BBC’s alias account started following such accounts, Instagram started to show ads featuring women offering video calls and showing clearly naked couples having sex. Gradually, the platform started showing adverts of children with adults in sexually suggestive situations, with links to Telegram channels.
The probe found that 30 unique ads appeared promoting child sexual abuse, although some of these were shared by multiple accounts. Other than child sexual abuse content, the platform also pushed around 20 ads featuring adult pornography.
Some ads showed minor boys and girls in sexual acts, while others included adult men with minor girls in such acts. The ads included links to Telegram channels to watch the full videos.
The BBC reported that Instagram’s ad review system initially approved at least one of these advertisements, stating that it did not violate community guidelines when it was flagged. However, after the broadcaster formally sought a response from Meta, the company disabled several of the ads, suspended the accounts responsible, removed additional violating content and blocked the linked URLs.
A Meta spokesperson acknowledged that no system is perfect and that their review process may miss some violations, while emphasising the use of AI tools and proactive reporting to authorities.
The BBC has referred all the identified advertisements and Telegram channels to Indian authorities for further action. BBC also reported two channels hosting such content to Telegram, and one of them was later taken down.
Telegram is not a member of either the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children or the Internet Watch Foundation, which works with most online platforms to find, report and remove such material, and has repeatedly rejected calls to join the platforms. However, it claims that it enforces a zero-tolerance policy for Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). The messaging platform has started using hashes from organizations like the Internet Watch Foundation to expand the database of CSAM.
