Meta has agreed to directly report child-safety matters to Indian law enforcement through the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, as government scrutiny intensifies over how social platforms detect and respond to child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Meta said the reports will be routed through the portal managed by the Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C).
The move follows months of regulatory pressure, including an inquiry by the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) into allegations that paid Instagram advertisements were linked to channels distributing illegal child sexual abuse material. The National Human Rights Commission is separately examining the issue and has sought clarity on whether mandatory reporting requirements were followed.
Meta said it had removed violating advertisements, disabled associated accounts and blocked URLs connected to policy-breaking content. The company also said its systems removed more than 4 million suspicious accounts globally over the previous year and roughly 1.6 lakh accounts in India during the preceding six months. It maintains that automated systems and human reviewers are used together, while acknowledging that no moderation system catches every violation.
The Centre has also pushed Meta to improve detection, increase human oversight and strengthen moderation for Indian languages and local contexts. Government discussions have extended beyond CSAM to deepfakes, unlabelled AI-generated content and recommendation algorithms, reflecting wider concern over how automated systems identify and amplify harmful material.
Meta’s decision represents a more direct reporting channel rather than the end of the regulatory debate. The larger test will be whether faster coordination between platforms and law enforcement leads to earlier detection, removal and investigation of harmful activity — while also improving accountability around the automated moderation systems operating at enormous scale.
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