‘Message has gone home’: Govt sees ‘some action’ from Meta on child sexual abuse content

'Govt clear no safe harbour if law violated,' says an IT ministry official. This comes following meetings between Meta executives and officials.

The logo of Meta at the Meta Lab in Los Angeles, California, US. | Reuters

New Delhi: The government has seen some action from Meta on the issue of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), with the message that safe harbour shield will not be available in cases of violations having “gone home”, sources in the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) said Tuesday.

The intent was not about censorship, but ensuring that Indian laws are followed and that harms on social media are mitigated, the sources said, adding that the platform had shown increased sensitivity on such content and moved to filter out unlawful material.

The intent was not censorship, but about ensuring that Indian laws are followed and that harms on social media are mitigated, the sources said, adding that the platform had shown increased sensitivity on such content and moved to filter out unlawful material.

“We have seen some action on (the) CSAM issue; Govt clear no safe harbour if law violated; message has gone home,” an IT ministry official said.

The remarks follow a set of meetings between Meta executives and officials of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) earlier this month. 

A Meta team led by Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan met Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and MeitY officials on 5 and 6 August, after the ministry summoned the company over its handling of CSAM, deepfakes, bot accounts and AI-generated content. 

During those discussions, the company was learnt to have acknowledged shortcomings in content moderation, including the temporary restriction of a Facebook post by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which it attributed to an error in its automated moderation systems.

Officials cited Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, which grants intermediaries protection from liability for third-party content, provided they meet due-diligence obligations. The ministry had also issued Meta a notice over CSAM appearing in paid advertisements on Instagram.

According to the sources, the company was asked to take corrective steps and report on their effectiveness, with follow-ups planned. Meta told officials that its systems were not fully equipped for the volume of unlawful content on its platforms and that it was not able to control all of it, the sources said.

The WhatsApp username issue

 On the WhatsApp username feature, the sources said the issue was being examined from an industry-wide perspective, as it was not specific to one company but applied across messaging platforms. 

WhatsApp, owned by Meta, announced in June that users could reserve usernames and, over the coming months, choose to be found and contacted by a handle rather than a phone number. The company has said there will be no searchable directory of usernames and no auto-suggestions, meaning a person would need to know the exact username to make first contact. The government will continue to monitor and track these concerns, the sources said.

The sources said the intent was not to censor or suppress content, but to ensure that social media platforms do not create situations adverse to India’s social fabric. They said concerns around platform regulation had also been raised by Western liberal democracies, which indicated a global challenge rather than one specific to India. Cultural contexts differ across countries, they added, and reasonable restrictions on freedom of speech remain applicable in India under the Constitution.

Article 19(2) permits the State to impose reasonable restrictions on the right to freedom of speech and expression on grounds that include the sovereignty and integrity of India, public order, decency and morality.

The sources also said that synthetically generated content, or AI-generated content, must be labelled, framing it as a matter of a user’s right to know whether content is synthetic or authentic. 

The requirement follows the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026, notified by MeitY on 10 February and in effect from 20 February. 

The rules define synthetically generated information for the first time in Indian law, require platforms to label such content and preserve provenance metadata, and compress the window for removing flagged unlawful content. Significant social media intermediaries are required to have users declare, before publishing, whether their content is synthetically generated, and to verify that declaration through an automated process.

The government had earlier stated that global platforms operating in the country must function within India’s constitutional framework. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in February, Vaishnaw said it was important for multinationals to understand the cultural context of the country in which they operate.

(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)