July 6 (UPI) — India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has issued a notice to Meta over advertisements of child sexual abuse on Instagram and WhatsApp.
The Indian government warned Meta on Saturday over the presence of such ads and called for an explanation within seven days.
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has issued a stern notice to Meta over the presence of Child Sexual Exploitative & Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram,” the Indian government said in a statement. “The government has directed Instagram to immediately disable all advertisements and content that promote or facilitate access to CSEAM and has sought a detailed explanation from Meta within 7 days.”
BBC reported Friday that Meta was running advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material in India via Instagram. Some of those advertisements linked to Telegram pages that offered child sexual abuse material for sale.
Telegram said it has removed more than 274,000 groups from its platform due to child sexual abuse material this year.
A Meta spokesperson said the company has a “zero-tolerance policy for soliciting or sharing” child sexual abuse material.
“We use advanced AI technology to proactively detect violating content and individuals, but we are in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5 billion users and try to evade our detection,” the Meta spokesperson said.
