Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw Directs MeitY To Summon Meta Over Child Abuse Ads
MeitY is expected to receive an immediate clarification from Meta on how such child sexual abuse adverts are being run on Instagram.
Published : July 3, 2026 at 5:41 PM IST
Hyderabad: Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for Railways, Information and Broadcasting, and Electronics and Information Technology, has directed the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) officials to summon META executives seeking an explanation over paid advertisements (ads) on Instagram promoting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in India, sources said.
MeitY is expected to seek an immediate clarification from the tech giant over how CSAM ads were approved and allowed to run on the popular social media platform.
This comes after a BBC Eye Investigation report accused Meta's Instagram of running paid adverts relating to the same matter. The report mentions that CSAM ads included terms such as "rape video" and "child video" and links that directed users to paid content on Telegram channels, which cost as little as 99 rupees (about $1).
It highlights that the test account set up in India began surfacing sexually exploitative advertisements involving children within days, after the same account followed a small group of women posting suggestive content.
Around 30 unique ads promoting CSAM appeared on the account's feed, alongside roughly 20 ads for adult pornography, before being reported to Indian authorities.
Meta's advertising system is designed to screen every ad before publication using automated review technology, forwarding uncertain cases to human moderators. However, when the BBC reported one flagged advert, Instagram initially responded that it did not violate community guidelines, before Meta later confirmed it had disabled several ads and suspended the accounts responsible.
Meta told the BBC that "no system is perfect", adding that it conducts ongoing detection on live ads and reports apparent child exploitation cases to the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The company denied prioritising advertising revenue over user safety, noting it disabled more than four million accounts in 2025 for suspicious behaviour.
Telegram said it had removed over 274,000 CSAM-related groups and channels in 2026, though BBC found at least one reported channel continued operating after being flagged.
Retired Indian Supreme Court justice Madan Lokur said the findings raised serious legal concerns, suggesting the court could act against platforms profiting from criminal activity. Former Meta vice-president Brian Boland, who left the company in 2020, said its recommendation systems were built to maximise engagement rather than safety, calling the outcome unsurprising given weak internal safeguards.
According to the report, India received 1.9 million CSAM-related tipline reports in 2025, second only to the United States. Cyber police official Shikha Goel and child-safety NGO Rati Foundation both noted that Meta platforms generate the largest share of such reports, though this partly reflects stronger detection systems rather than a higher prevalence of abuse. Experts say criminal networks continue exploiting cross-platform gaps, moving users from Instagram to less-moderated apps like Telegram to evade enforcement.
