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Social media platform Meta has agreed to report child sexual abuse cases to law enforcement agencies in India as well, multiple sources told Business Standard.
“Online safety of children is a fundamental principle for any social media to operate in India, and it is non-negotiable. It is a first step towards making the platforms safe for children and much more needs to be done,” a senior government official said.
Till now, Meta used to report instances of CSAM only to a US organisation, the Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), which would then co-ordinate with other agencies across the world and work on tracking down the abusers.
Apart from Meta, the government has also reached out to all other social media platforms to “proactively identify and remove such content,” a government official said.
The move to report instances of CSAM to Indian law enforcement agencies follows multiple rounds of meetings with senior Meta executives. In August, during talks with Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, one of the major demands put forth by Indian government officials was that all such instances of CSAM and details of repeat offenders should be given directly to Indian law enforcement agencies for quick action, instead of them having to wait to get that information from NCMEC.
The meetings with Meta executives, including Kaplan, lasted over a week, starting August 5. Kaplan was accompanied by Neil Potts, Meta's vice-president of public policy; Rafael Frankel, head of Asia-Pacific public policy; Aman Jain, head of public policy in India; and other senior executives.
Earlier in July, officials from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had summoned senior executives from social media company Meta over reports of Instagram running advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The summons were issued after media reports alleged that Meta’s photo- and video-sharing platform Instagram had been running paid advertisements that promoted CSAM in India.
