Social media major Meta, the owner of Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram, has agreed to report child sexual abuse cases to appropriate law enforcement agencies in India, the company said on Tuesday.
Meta India Managing Director and country head Arun Srinivas had been summoned by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) again on Wednesday, government sources said. Meta officials had last week visited the child rights body as part of an inquiry into alleged advertisements of child abuse content on Meta-owned platforms in India.
Meanwhile, Meta's move to directly report abuse is the first step toward making the platforms safe for children, Indian officials told ET that much more remains to be done.
"Protecting children on our platforms is a priority for us and we’re committed to working with the government to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are held responsible,” a Meta spokesperson said on Tuesday. “To collectively strengthen our efforts to combat this harm, Meta will now report child safety matters directly to the Cyber crime portal managed by I4C."
An office attached to the Home Ministry, I4C manages the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
While Meta was always legally obligated to report these crimes, officials pointed out Meta currently routes the information through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), a US-based non-profit organization.
"NCMEC has historically forwarded these to law enforcement in various countries. The roundabout process creates delays and makes catching perpetrators difficult," a Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) official said.
MeitY has been having regular meetings with Meta on technical measures since August when Meta's senior executives led by global chief policy officer Joel Kaplan were summoned to India over a host of issues, including the spread of child abuse content online.
BBC Eye allegations
The NCPCR had issued a notice to Meta on July 3, hours after an investigative report by BBC Eye alleged advertisements related to child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSAM) were live on Meta-owned Instagram in India.
The ads allegedly used graphic terms, and linked users to channels on the messaging app Telegram, where they could buy the material for as little as Rs 99. Given that ads on Instagram are only published after first being approved by its moderation technology, MeitY had directed Meta to disable them, and other content promoting and facilitating access to such material. Days later, Meta said it removed 1,60,000 suspicious accounts in India over the preceding six months using advanced AI detection tools that identify when individuals post suspicious off-platform links.
Last month, Kaplan and his team committed to further strengthen its automated monitoring systems to filter and curb child abuse content on Meta platforms in a meeting with Electronics and Industry Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, and other senior MeitY officials, ET had reported.
While the government has been evaluating them to see if these can effectively address its concerns regarding content moderation, the presence of existing child abuse content remains a major issue, officials have pointed out.
Indian probes
Since the BBC investigation broke, the NCPCR, and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) have begun independent investigation into the matter, and sought specific, point-wise action-taken reports from MeitY, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) and the Delhi Police, ET had reported. According to the NHRC notice, the advertisements for child abuse materials allegedly used phrases such as “rape video” and “child video” and redirected users to Telegram channels where it was allegedly offered for sale.
The Centre remains engaged with other platforms as well to proactively identify and remove such content, an official said.
"The government is continuously engaging with social media platforms to curb harmful information. Online safety of children is a fundamental principle for any social media to operate in India and it is non-negotiable," the official said.
