New Delhi [India], July 14 : IT Secretary S Krishnan on Monday said the Centre has received Meta's response to its notice over child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platforms and is examining the reply before taking further action.
Speaking on the issue at a press conference, Krishnan said the response was received on Saturday.
"We've received a reply from Meta on the issue of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM). The response was received on Saturday and is currently under examination. Appropriate action will be undertaken after due examination," he said.
The development comes days after the Centre issued a notice to Meta directing it to remove Instagram advertisements promoting child sexual abuse. Following the notice, Meta said it had removed the advertisements and disabled accounts found to violate its policies against child exploitation.
In a statement, the company said, "Child exploitation is a horrific crime and every day, we work aggressively to fight this kind of abuse both on and off our platforms."
"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. Our subsequent investigation led to additional action, including removing further ads, disabling accounts, and blocking URLs linked to policy-violating content," Meta said.
Highlighting its enforcement efforts, the company said, "Globally, last year alone, thanks to improvements to our technology, we automatically removed more than 4 million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram, on top of 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 exploitative activity. "In the last six months alone, this led to the removal of 160,000 accounts in India, " it said.
Earlier, issuing the notice over Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said, "Meity has ordered Instagram to disable all ads and content promoting and facilitating access to CSEAM." The ministry had also demanded a detailed explanation within 7 days.
IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had directed Meity officials to summon Meta over Instagram ads allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material.
Under Section 67 (B) of the IT Act, it is a punishable offence to publish or transmit material depicting children in sexually explicit acts, etc. in electronic form.
Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSEAM) refers to material containing sexual images in any form of a child who is abused or sexually exploited, according to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.
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