New Delhi: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) will be summoning Meta over paid ads allegedly promoting child sexual abuse on Instagram in India, on the directions of IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, ThePrint has learnt.
The move follows an investigation by BBC Eye, which reported that Instagram—whose parent company is Meta—approved and displayed these advertisements to users in India. The ads, the report added, used terms such as “rape video” and “child video”, and directed users to Telegram channels where content was sold for as little as Rs 99.
The summons is the second regulatory action against Meta within a week. On Wednesday, MeitY had issued a notice to Meta over the proposed rollout of WhatsApp’s usernames feature in India, directing the company to submit an explanation within three days. The ministry said the feature may materially increase the incidence of online fraud, phishing, digital arrest scams and impersonation attacks, and directed WhatsApp not to proceed until consultations conclude.
The BBC said it set up an alias account to examine how Instagram recommends content after observing that the platform “was pushing sexually suggestive content, even when a user hadn’t searched for such material”.
Through the alias account, the BBC started following a small number of profiles posting suggestive content, and within days began receiving explicit advertisements, progressing to advertisements depicting children with adults in sexually suggestive situations that linked to Telegram channels. In total, the BBC documented around 30 advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material and about 20 featuring adult pornography.
In one case, the broadcaster reported an advertisement showing a girl with display text suggesting she had been sexually assaulted. Instagram responded 24 hours later that the advertisement did not violate its community guidelines and would not be taken down. It disabled advertisements, suspended accounts, removed content and blocked URLs only after the BBC contacted Meta for comment.
Meta told BBC that it removed flagged content and disabled accounts, adding that it was “categorially inaccurate” to suggest that it knowingly and deliberately targeted ads featuring children to “users with an inappropriate interest in such material”.
The company added that no system is perfect and its review process may not detect all policy violations.
The BBC said it found two Telegram channels selling such material; one was taken down and the other continued posting. Telegram said it uses automated and human moderation and has removed more than 274,000 groups and channels linked to such material this year.
The report said that in 2025, India had received 1.9 million tipline reports in 2025 from the NCMEC CyberTipline system—America’s centralised reporting system operated by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) for the online exploitation of children—second only to the US itself, which recorded two million. US-based social media companies have to mandatorily report child sexual abuse content to the NCMEC CyberTipline.
‘Meta team met MeitY officials today’
According to government sources, a Meta team met MeitY officials Friday following the notice over the usernames feature. Ministry officials sensitised them about the government’s concerns relating to the feature.
As Meta has been given three days to furnish a detailed explanation, the company is expected to submit a reply within that deadline.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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