FILE PHOTO: People walk behind a logo of Meta Platforms company, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File Photo//File Photo
| Photo Credit: FRANCIS MASCARENHAS
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology is summoning Meta over a recent report about the proliferation of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) advertisements on Instagram.
IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw directed “Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) officials to summon Meta on the matter of Instagram ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India,” an official said.
Separately, Meta also met with IT Ministry officials to discuss the username feature on WhatsApp, which the latter are worried could lead to an increase in fraud on the messaging platform. Meta did not respond to a query on the meeting.
On the summons, a spokesperson told The Hindu that it has a “zero tolerance” policy towards CSAM. “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,” the spokesperson said. “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.”
CSAM is illegal, and Meta policies also forbid pornographic content featuring adults. Yet, during a test phase, the BBC report noted that the broadcaster was shown over two dozen advertisements promoting CSAM, with links to Telegram channels.
Telegram maintains daily logs of channels it takes down for featuring CSAM, and routinely takes down over 1,000 channels a day, a review of the logs shows.
The IT Ministry will “seek explanation” from Meta regarding the issue.
On the WhatsApp username issue, Meta has said that it would only roll it out later in the coming months and that it would notify users of the country of origin of the people who message someone for the first time without exposing their phone number. IT Secretary S. Krishnan said on the sidelines of an industry event that WhatsApp would be asked to explain the feature in more detail in writing. The deadline for a written response is Saturday (July 4, 2026).
The IT Ministry has argued that the feature could lead to impersonation and scams, while protecting scammers’ phone numbers, making it harder to trace them.
Published – July 03, 2026 06:22 pm IST
