Shafaqna India: Days after the Centre issued it a notice over alleged child sexual abuse material in paid Instagram advertisements, Meta on Tuesday set out its efforts to tackle child exploitation across its platforms, saying it had removed 1.6 lakh accounts in India in the past six months for posting suspicious links linked to exploitative activity.
In a blog post published on Tuesday, the company said child exploitation was a “horrific crime” and stressed that it works aggressively to combat such abuse both on and off its platforms. It said its enforcement systems combine artificial intelligence tools, advertiser monitoring, blocking of violative links and intelligence-sharing across the wider technology industry.
Meta said it was aware of recent reports about Instagram advertisements in India that violated its policies on child exploitation and acknowledged the seriousness of the issue. The company said it did not want such content on its platforms and was committed to improving its systems to prevent and remove it.
The social media company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, rejected suggestions that it deliberately targets advertisements featuring children at users with inappropriate interests. On the contrary, it said, it uses technology to identify accounts showing potentially suspicious behaviour related to children and removed more than four million such accounts globally last year.
It also said its newer AI-powered enforcement systems now cover languages spoken by 98 per cent of people online. According to the company, it removed more than 36 million pieces of child exploitation content worldwide last year, in addition to taking action against suspicious accounts.
In India, Meta said its automated systems had led to the removal of 1,60,000 accounts over the past six months after detecting suspicious off-platform links combined with other signals associated with exploitative activity. It added that before the recent cases were brought to its attention, its enforcement systems had already identified and disabled some of the advertisements and accounts involved. A subsequent internal investigation, it said, led to additional ads being removed, accounts being disabled and URLs linked to policy-violating content being blocked.
The statement comes against the backdrop of mounting regulatory pressure in India. Last week, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a notice to Meta over child sexual exploitative and abuse material in paid advertisements on Instagram. The ministry directed the company to disable all advertisements and content promoting or facilitating access to such material and sought a detailed explanation within seven days.
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The action followed directions from IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to summon Meta over reports that Instagram advertisements were allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material. Government sources said on Tuesday that Meta’s formal response to the notice was still awaited and that the focus would be on the corrective steps taken by the company to address the issue.
The ministry’s intervention came amid a BBC investigation that alleged Meta’s recommendation systems had promoted videos containing child sexual abuse material and exposed gaps in the platform’s safeguards. The report also alleged that paid advertisements had appeared on Facebook and Instagram carrying terms such as “rape video” and “child video”, directing users to Telegram channels where such content was allegedly being sold.
In its blog post, Meta said its advertising review process combines automated systems with human reviewers to detect and remove violative advertisements, although it acknowledged that no system can catch every violation. It said advertisements are screened before they go live and remain subject to continuous review, while users can also report content they believe breaches platform rules. History
The company said it also monitors advertiser behaviour beyond individual ads and can reject advertisements or restrict business accounts, ad accounts, pages and user accounts found to be violating its policies. It reiterated that it maintains a zero-tolerance policy towards child nudity, abuse and exploitation, including the sharing or solicitation of exploitative imagery, inappropriate interactions with teenagers and the sexualisation of minors.
Meta added that it reports apparent child exploitation cases to law enforcement through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, publishes transparency reports and works with industry bodies and law enforcement agencies to combat online child exploitation beyond its own platforms.
It said the work was ongoing and that it would continue investing in technology, ad review processes and enforcement measures to keep young users safe and hold offenders accountable.
Source; Natoinal Herald
