Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, issued a statement on July 7, responding to allegations that its platforms facilitated the the promotion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child pornography. In the last six months alone, 1,60,000 suspicious accounts in India were removed, Meta said. The statement was issued in response to a recent investigation by BBC Eye Investigation.
The BBC published an investigation alleging that Instagram was running paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material in India. According to the report, these advertisements directed users to Telegram channels where sexually explicit content involving children was allegedly sold.
The investigation found that videos containing CSAM were being amplified by Meta’s recommendation algorithm, while advertisements promoting child pornography remained available on Facebook and Instagram despite the company’s advertising policies prohibiting nudity, sexual content and material that violates its community standards.
Responding to this, Meta said that even before these instances were brought to their attention, they had already identified and disabled several accounts which had violated their policy.
“We’re 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 on our platforms, and we’re committed to improving our efforts to combat it.”
“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 claimed that their “subsequent investigation led to additional action, including removing further ads, disabling accounts, and blocking URLs linked to policy-violating content.”
The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company said that it is “categorically inaccurate” to suggest that they knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest in children. “Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over 4 million of these accounts last year,” the statement read.
Meta said that they have a “zero tolerance approach” towards child nudity, abuse, and exploitation — which includes the sharing or soliciting of child exploitation imagery, inappropriate interactions with teens, and the sexualisation of minors.
They said that globally, last year alone, more than 4 million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram, on top of the 36 million pieces of content we removed for child exploitation through automation.
“We have advanced AI detection tools set up to identify when individuals post suspicious off-platform links in coordination with other signals indicating child exploitative activity. In the last six months alone, this led to the removal of 160,000 accounts in India.”
They further said that when they learn about apparent child exploitation, they report it to local law enforcement authorities through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in compliance with applicable law. “In India, in compliance with the Protection Of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2021 and accompanying Rules, Meta ensures that such content is reported by NCMEC to the national cyber-crime reporting portal on behalf of Meta. Thanks to our continued investment in detection and reporting, we report more to law enforcement authorities than anyone else in the industry, something that is also acknowledged in the recent news reporting,” the statement said.