Why is NCPCR investigating Meta, Instagram?

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File photo for representational purposes only. | Photo Credit: Reuters

The story so far: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) summoned Meta officials for a hearing on Wednesday (September 9, 2026) as a part of an inquiry on child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) on Instagram. An investigation by British public broadcaster BBC threw up many ads that linked out to CSEAM on other platforms. The IT Ministry has also summoned the company on the issue.

In July, BBC reported that the organisation saw dozens of ads promoting CSEAM on Instagram with a test account. CSEAM is banned around the world, and attracts strict criminal penalties. Meta said in a statement, “Before these cases were brought to our attention, our enforcement systems had already identified and disabled several of the violating ads and the accounts behind them.”

The company said that it automatically removes millions of CSAM posting accounts each year, but that “no system is perfect and that determined criminals will continue to try to exploit our platform”. This month, the Tech Transparency Project reported that it found hundreds of CSAM ads on Facebook and Instagram, including some that were served to India.

While social media platforms prohibit CSEAM, automatic moderation systems, that use some AI to detect unlawful media, are not able to catch all violative submissions. The Tech Transparency Project, a US-based nonprofit, said that what Meta was doing was not enough even within the scope of what it could. The nonprofit said that even in cases where Meta was taking down CSEAM, it was tagging the ads as adult sexual content, and so “may be undercounting instances of child sexual abuse”.

While the firm revised this information for ads reported by TTP, “did not fix the flow of child exploitation content in its advertising system,” and continued to show CSEAM ads to certain audiences, the nonprofit said. One of the ads appeared to feature an unidentified “underaged European royal,” TTP said.

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Many such ads were placed by “resellers” for ad spots on Meta’s platforms based in China, who account for billions of dollars of ad revenue. TTP pointed to a Reuters report that indicated that ads going through this channel were subject to a more relaxed enforcement regime, where the platform earned $18 billion in 2024. This channel is intended for Chinese firms who want to advertise to overseas customers.

Even with a human reporting CSEAM posts, action was not guaranteed, TTP found. “With 57% (73) of the CSAM ads reported to Meta, the company sent back a message that said, “We’ve taken a look and found that this ad doesn’t go against our Advertising Standards”,”, TTP said.

NCPCR issued a notice on July 3, the same day the BBC report came out, demanding an explanation from the company. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also sought an explanation from the company.

Shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s July 23 video message to Indian youth was briefly removed from Facebook due to an “error,” MeitY summoned Meta’s global public affairs director Joel Kaplan to demand an explanation on that removal. In that meeting, the BBC reporting was also discussed. The summoning came as the government sent a massive volume of takedown notices for Instagram posts on the Jantar Mantar protests, and footage from the protests and the ensuing police crackdown went viral.

Meta provided written responses to both MeitY and NCPCR. The latter declined a Right to Information request by The Hindu for a copy of the company’s response, arguing that providing this information would impede its investigation.

After the written response, Meta officials were summoned by NCPCR this month. Neither side provided a description of the meeting.

Like the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the NCPCR’s founding law, the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, gives the body the powers of a civil court under the Criminal Procedure Code (replaced recently by the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill, 2023).

As such, it has the statutory power to demand explanations on issues of child safety from private organisations and can demand reports from law enforcement.

NCPCR’s remit includes “matters relating to children in need of special care and protection including children in distress,marginalized and disadvantaged children, children in conflict with law, juveniles, children without family and children of prisoners and recommend appropriate remedial measures,” and to “[i]nquire into complaints [relating to] non implementation of laws providing for protection and development of children,” the commission said.

NCPCR has in the past issued notices to firms like Netflix in response to the show Bombay Begums, and to Bourn Vita maker Mondelez over sugar content in their malt powder.

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