Meta Says It Is Intensifying Efforts to Combat Child Exploitation Following Government Notice

PTI, July 7, 2026, New Delhi: Terming child exploitation as a horrific crime, Meta on Tuesday published a detailed blog outlining its efforts to combat child sexual abuse material across its platforms, days after the Government of India issued a notice to the social media giant over reports of Instagram advertisements promoting such content.

Meta said it works aggressively every day to prevent and remove child exploitation on and off its platforms.

"We're aware of recent news reports about Instagram ads in India that violated our policies against child exploitation. 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," the company said.

Meta also rejected suggestions that it knowingly or deliberately targets advertisements featuring children to users based on inappropriate interests.

"It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest. On the contrary, we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed more than four million of these accounts last year," the company stated.

According to Meta, it has strengthened its AI-powered enforcement systems against child exploitation, with newer technologies now covering languages spoken by 98 per cent of people online.

The company said that, globally, it automatically removed more than four million suspicious accounts and 36 million pieces of child exploitation content last year.

In India, Meta said its AI-based detection systems helped remove 1,60,000 accounts during the past six months for posting suspicious links associated with exploitative activity.

Meta further said that its enforcement systems had already identified and disabled several of the advertisements and accounts involved before the matter was brought to its attention.

"Our subsequent investigation led to additional action, including removing further ads, disabling accounts, and blocking URLs linked to content that violated our policies," the company said.

Meta, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, owns the social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The company added that its advanced AI detection tools are designed to identify suspicious off-platform links when combined with other signals that may indicate child exploitative activity.

"In the last six months alone, this led to the removal of 1,60,000 accounts in India," Meta said.

Government sources told PTI that Meta's official response to the notice issued on Saturday is still awaited.

According to the sources, the government's primary focus will be on the corrective measures and actions taken by the company to address the concerns raised.

Last week, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued a notice to Meta regarding Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) appearing in paid advertisements on Instagram.

The ministry directed Instagram to disable all advertisements and content promoting or facilitating access to CSEAM and sought a detailed explanation from the company within seven days.