Meta Defends Ad Review After Instagram Runs Child Sexual Abuse Ads in India

Meta is defending its “robust” ad review after a BBC investigation found paid ads on Instagram in India promoting child sexual abuse material, using terms such as “rape video” and “child video” and linking to Telegram channels selling the material for as little as Rs 99.

MediaNama reported that Meta’s July 7 blog post conceded “may not catch every violation,” and that Meta told the BBC its “every advert is reviewed before being allowed on its platforms,” while standard posts “are not generally checked” until after they are published.

ABC News

MediaNama said the pipeline gap involved a human backstop that failed even when triggered, including a BBC-described advertisement where Instagram replied 24 hours later that its review team found the ad “does not go against our community standards.”

MediaNama also said Meta’s ad standard on Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse, and Nudity is stricter for ads than baseline Community Standards, and that the rule existed but enforcement failed when the review approved the ads.

After the BBC investigation, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued Meta a seven-day notice to explain how the advertisements passed review and directed Instagram to disable all such advertisements and content.

MediaNama said the notice followed the BBC Eye investigation and that Meta responded by saying it had nothing further to share when asked whether it had responded to MeitY’s seven-day notice and what changes it was making to ad review.

Al Jazeera

MediaPost reported that Meta told the BBC it did not “knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children,” and said it had removed the ads and accounts in violation and URLs.

MediaPost also said the Indian government ordered Meta to remove the ads and content on Instagram and demanded an explanation of how Meta allowed these ads on the social platform, while Meta wrote that “Before these cases were brought to our attention, our enforcement systems had already identified and disabled several of the violating ads and the accounts behind them.”

Meta’s defense emphasized scale and detection, with MediaNama describing that Meta removed over four million suspicious accounts globally last year, 160,000 accounts in India in the last six months through off-platform link detection, and 13 million pieces of CSAM between October and December 2025 with over 96% detected before anyone reported them.

MediaNama argued those figures did not address the ad review pipeline that approved the CSAM advertisements, and it said Section 79 safe harbour conditions sit awkwardly with paid, amplified content under the IT Rules 2021, including Rule 4(3) for significant social media intermediaries that transmit information for direct financial benefit.

MediaNama quoted retired Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur as saying Instagram was “making money by participating in a criminal activity,” and that “the platform cannot, cannot shirk its responsibility.”

MediaNama also reported that a Rajasthan High Court ruling held that Meta’s inaction after being notified of obscene images of a minor voided its safe harbour, and that the court said an intermediary “cannot remain a mute spectator once illegality is brought to its notice.”