NCPCR Summons Meta India Executives Over Alleged Child Sexual Abuse Material Ads

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has summoned Meta India’s managing director and head of public policy for a hearing on Wednesday, September 9, over allegations linked to advertisements involving Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Material on Meta’s platforms, Times of India reported.

A BBC Eye investigation triggered the regulatory action. NCPCR took suo motu cognisance of the report on CSEAM advertisements and served a notice to Meta Platforms Inc. on July 3. The tech firm delivered its clarification seven days later.

After reviewing that reply, the commission decided to institute an inquiry to ascertain the facts and circumstances of the matter. As part of that process, it has summoned Meta India’s managing director and the head of Meta India to appear before it on September 9.

The hearing is meant to establish the facts surrounding the allegations. It will also examine how Meta responded to concerns raised by the child rights body after the BBC Eye report.

Tech Transparency Project reported on Tuesday that Meta Platforms Inc. had run more than 300 advertisements on Instagram and Facebook this year containing suspected child sexual abuse material.

TTP said the ads collectively reached more than 29,000 people. It said the advertisements typically used artificial intelligence to depict young children being molested and that many promoted deepfake "nudify" apps.

TTP had earlier reported on nudify apps and traced their source to app developers and a Meta advertising partner in China. The group is a research arm of the Washington, DC-based nonpartisan corporate and government watchdog Campaign for Accountability.

"Content involving child sexual abuse is among the most serious that can be found online," Katie Paul, TTP’s director, said. "But this content isn't hiding in dark corners of the internet. It's being used in paid ads on Meta platforms."

TTP gave examples from the ads it identified. In one case, it said an ad used a photo a young girl had posted to her Instagram account and animated it into a video depicting a sex act.

Another ad, TTP said, showed a preteen girl removing her shirt, with accompanying text promising "dark" content. TTP reported the ads to the Congressionally mandated National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Meta denied tolerating such content. "We don't tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated," Meta spokesman Andy Stone told Bloomberg News.

Stone said many of the flagged ads had already been removed. He added that those behind such activity often shift tactics to evade Meta’s systems and that the company continues to strengthen its detection and enforcement.

TTP had reported in July that Meta showed thousands of sexually suggestive ads for nudification apps. The new findings relate to more graphic ads, according to TTP.

Meta acted in stages. By Sept. 1, the platform had taken down roughly half the illicit promotions from its ad library, TTP said. The company cleared the rest once the watchdog presented its evidence, the group added.

Law enforcement and experts often use the term child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, instead of child pornography because it is evidence of a non-consensual crime. TTP’s report also comes soon after Meta agreed to a landmark settlement to pay up to $18 billion to resolve claims from US states over the alleged harms its apps caused to young people.

Australia and more than two dozen countries are implementing or pursuing bans on under-16s accessing social media platforms such as Instagram. The 332 ads identified by TTP reached users in the European Union, the UK, the US, India and Australia.

Some of those ads reached only a handful of users, some reached hundreds and two reached more than 2,500 in the EU alone. Wired reported last month that Meta had run more than 50 ads containing CSAM.

Ad spending remained low. The flagged promotions generally drew under 200 impressions each with cumulative spending below $5,000, Stone said. The tech giant recorded $60.8bn in revenue during the second quarter and counted an average of 3.6bn daily active users in June.

Instagram and Facebook are not available in China. But businesses there use both platforms to reach global audiences, and TTP said some of Meta’s advertising partners in China placed ads containing CSAM.