Key facts
- Instagram ran paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material in India.
- The ads linked to Telegram channels where the material could be purchased for as little as 99 rupees.
- Instagram's moderation technology initially approved some of these ads.
- Meta, Instagram's parent company, stated it has taken action against violating accounts and ads after being alerted by the BBC.
- A retired Indian Supreme Court justice raised concerns about Instagram profiting from criminal activity.
Instagram has been running paid advertisements that promote child sexual abuse material in India, according to a BBC Eye investigation. These ads, which were seen by the BBC World Service, used terms such as "rape video" and "child video" and directed users to channels on the messaging app Telegram where the material could be purchased for as little as 99 rupees (approximately $1).
Instagram's moderation technology is responsible for approving ads before they are published. When the BBC initially reported one of these ads, the platform responded after 24 hours, stating that the post did not violate its community guidelines. Following inquiries from the BBC, Meta, Instagram's parent company, announced that it had disabled several adverts and suspended the accounts responsible. The company also indicated that it had removed additional ads, disabled more accounts, and blocked URLs that violated its policies.
The BBC established an alias account on Instagram after noticing the platform was pushing sexually suggestive content, even without specific user searches. This account began following women who posted sexually suggestive content, leading to the appearance of advertisements featuring explicit adult content and, subsequently, children in sexually suggestive situations, with links to Telegram channels.
A retired justice of India's Supreme Court, Madan Lokur, expressed concern that Instagram was "making money by participating in a criminal activity." He suggested that the issue was serious enough for the Supreme Court of India to initiate legal proceedings and for the government to act against social media platforms, emphasizing that platforms cannot evade responsibility despite legal protections.
Brian Boland, a former vice-president at Facebook, stated that Instagram's algorithm is designed to maximize user engagement by showing increasingly extreme content. He expressed horror and surprise at the BBC's findings, attributing the outcomes to the algorithm's pursuit of revenue and clicks without sufficient user protection. Boland, who left Facebook due to concerns about user safety, recalled leading a project to remove scam ads to prioritize user safety over revenue.
Meta has stated that child exploitation is a serious crime and that the company works aggressively to combat it. The company denied prioritizing revenue over safety and called it "categorically inaccurate" to suggest they knowingly and deliberately targeted ads featuring children to users with inappropriate interests. Meta also noted that its review process may not always detect all policy violations, but it continues to run proactive detection technology and reports apparent child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).