{"id":746214,"date":"2026-07-06T09:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746214\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T09:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T09:47:09","slug":"metas-woes-deepen-in-india-as-child-abuse-ads-on-instagram-draw-government-ire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746214\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta\u2019s woes deepen in India as child abuse ads on Instagram draw government ire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Indian government has warned of action against two of Meta’s<\/a> three major platforms, WhatsApp and Instagram, within a week, underscoring the growing regulatory risks the U.S. social media giant faces in a key market.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a “stern notice to Meta<\/a> over the presence of Child Sexual Exploitative & Abuse Material (CSEAM) in paid advertisements on Instagram,” according to a report by Indian state broadcaster DD News.<\/p>\n

The government has directed Instagram to “immediately disable all advertisements and content that promote” child abuse and has sought a detailed explanation from Meta within seven days, the report said.<\/p>\n

The regulatory warning to Meta came after an investigation by the BBC revealed on Friday that Instagram was running paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse<\/a> material in India. <\/p>\n

Meta has a “Zero tolerance policy” for child abuse-related content, a spokesperson for Meta told CNBC in an email. The company is using “AI technology to proactively detect violating content and individuals, but we are in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5 billion users and try to evade our detection,” it added.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the European Commission found that the social media giant was violating EU law by failing to prevent<\/a> children below 13 from accessing its platforms. Though Meta had disagreed with the preliminary findings, it could face fines of up to 6% of its total worldwide annual turnover if the findings are confirmed. <\/p>\n

The U.S. company is not facing an immediate risk of a fine in India, but has come under sharp regulatory scrutiny in its biggest market. The country has the largest audience base for Instagram, with more than 480 million<\/a> users, more than double the U.S. as of 2025, as per data from Statista. It also has more than 400 million Facebook users<\/a>, the most globally. <\/p>\n

Neil Shah, vice president of research at Counterpoint Research, said this was a “wake-up call for Meta to tighten its compliance and control for its platforms” as the Indian government is keen “to tighten the leash over these massive digital platforms.”<\/p>\n

Last week, Meta’s messaging app, WhatsApp, which has over half a million users in India, was also issued a warning over the roll-out of its username feature<\/a>. The government claimed the feature could increase cybercrime incidents and has directed the platform to pause its plans.<\/p>\n

Meta defended the introduction of usernames, calling it a “major privacy feature”<\/a>\u00a0designed to help people stay connected without giving away phone numbers.<\/p>\n

“I would describe India as a more demanding regulatory market rather than a hostile one,” Reema Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft,\u00a0told CNBC. Given India’s importance as a key digital market, she added that companies should expect regulators to engage more actively on “issues ranging from online safety to data governance.”<\/p>\n

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Indian government has warned of action against two of Meta’s three major platforms, WhatsApp and Instagram, within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8073,5681,28,122,2344,2195,74,21],"class_list":["post-746214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-asia-economy","tag-breaking-news-technology","tag-business","tag-business-news","tag-india","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-technology","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}