IT Secretary S Krishnan said that Meta’s response on Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) has been received. The Center is investigating it, after which further action will be taken. The government had issued a notice to Meta regarding objectionable advertisements on Instagram.
New Delhi [भारत]July 14 (ANI): IT Secretary S Krishnan on Monday said the Center has received Meta’s response regarding Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on its platform and the response is being examined before taking further action.
Speaking on the issue at a press conference, Krishnan said that the answer was received on Saturday. “We have received a response from Meta on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The response was received on Saturday and is currently being investigated. Appropriate action will be taken after proper investigation,” he said.
Meta had given clarification after the notice
The development comes days after the Center issued a notice to Meta, directing it to remove Instagram ads promoting child sexual abuse. Following the notice, Meta said it had removed ads and disabled accounts that violated its policies against child exploitation.
In a statement, the company said, “Child exploitation is a terrible crime and every day, we work aggressively to fight this type of abuse on and off our platforms.”
‘We take these concerns seriously’
Meta said, “We are 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 to appear on our platform, and we are committed to improving our efforts to address it. Before these matters were brought to our attention, our enforcement systems had already identified a number of violating ads and the accounts behind them. Our subsequent investigation led to additional action, including removing additional ads, disabling accounts, and blocking URLs associated with the policy violating content.”
Highlighting its enforcement efforts, the company said, “Globally, last year alone, thanks to improvements in our technology, we automatically removed more than 4 million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram, in addition to the 36 million pieces of content we removed for child exploitation.”
Meta said they have advanced AI detection tools set up to identify when individuals post suspicious off-platform links in coordination with other signals indicating child exploitation activity. “In the last six months alone, it led to the removal of 160,000 accounts in India,” it said.
What was the ministry’s order?
Earlier, while issuing a notice on Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had said, “MeitY has ordered Instagram to disable all advertisements and content promoting and facilitating CSEAM.”
The ministry had also sought detailed clarification within 7 days. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had directed MeitY officials to summon Meta over Instagram ads that are alleged to be promoting child sexual abuse content.
What does the law say?
Under Section 67(B) of the IT Act, publishing or transmitting material depicting children in sexually explicit acts in electronic form is a punishable offence.
According to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) refers to material in any form containing sexual images of a child who is abused or sexually exploited.
Content posted on these social media moderators is guided by their content policies and community guidelines, and users can report or flag content they feel is inappropriate or violates their community guidelines. (ANI)
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