'Categorically Inaccurate': Meta Denies Deliberately Targeting Instagram Child Sexual Abuse

Published 7 July 2026 · tech

'Categorically Inaccurate': Meta Denies Deliberately Targeting Instagram Child Sexual Abuse Published By, Last Updated: July 07, 2026, 22:31 IST Meta said it had begun disabling

'Categorically Inaccurate': Meta Denies Deliberately Targeting Instagram Child Sexual Abuse Published By, Last Updated: July 07, 2026, 22:31 IST Meta said it had begun disabling several of these "violating " even before the cases were highlighted, while denying that it deliberately targeted child exploitative. Meta said it removed 1.6 lakh accounts amid the Instagram controversy. A day after the Centre issued a stern message to Meta over Instagram featuring child sexual abuse content, the Mark Zuckerberg-led company has issued a detailed response, saying it was aware of the reports and took these concerns seriously. “We’re aware of recent news reports about Instagram in India that violated our policies against child exploitation. And we want to be clear: we take these concerns seriously, we never want this content on our platforms, and we’re committed to improving our efforts to combat it," Meta said in a blog post.

The company said it had begun disabling several of these “violating " even before the cases were highlighted, adding that additional action was taken after further investigation. It also said it was “inaccurate to suggest" that the company deliberately targeted featuring children to people based on an “inappropriate interest in children". 160,000 Meta Accounts Removed The company said it had removed 160,000 accounts in India over the past six months for sharing suspicious off-platform links connected to child exploitative activity. It admitted that no systems are perfect and that “determined criminals will continue to try to exploit our platform, including through our systems." “Our review process may not catch every violation, but we’re continuously working to stay ahead of bad actors through our robust ad review process," it added, noting that subsequent investigation had led to blocking more and URLs linked to content that violated Meta’s policies.

“It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we’d knowingly and deliberately target featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest in children. Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over 4 million of these accounts last year," it said. Centre’s Stern Notice To Meta The Central government has issued a stern notice to Meta, ordering the platform to immediately remove Instagram promoting child sexual abuse content. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Saturday ordered Instagram to remove all content that facilitated access to child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) and sought a detailed response from Meta within seven days. Meta faced intense scrutiny over its content moderation policies after a BBC investigation found that Instagram was displaying paid that CSEAM-related material in India. The reportedly linked users to channels on the messaging app Telegram and claimed users could buy the alleged child sexual abuse material for as little as Rs 99.