BBC Investigation Alleges Meta Promoted Child Sexual Abuse Ads in India Raising Major Safety Concerns
July 7, 2026
Repost @bbcnews
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Meta is profiting from paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material on Instagram in India, an investigation from the World Service has found. Despite policies prohibiting such material, the BBC identified paid adverts containing sexually explicit and suggestive content involving children.
Meta acknowledged its ad review process may not detect all policy violations, but denied knowingly targeting ads featuring child exploitation to users.
Meta told the BBC they fight child exploitation on their platforms, remove ads that violate their policies, and report such content to the authorities.
It said they had removed content flagged by the BBC and denied prioritising revenue over user safety.
Hours after our investigation was published, the Indian government said it had summoned representatives of Meta over the adverts.
#BBC #Meta #Instagram #fyp #OnlineSafety
English Script:
BBC reporter: Sir you headed the ads business. So you were the director before you became head of Meta India, sir. So will you please give us an answer, sir?
I wanted answers from Meta after I found paid child sexual abuse ads on Instagram in India. Oh my God. It began with this video on my feed. Innocent enough. But soon the algorithm began to offer more explicit videos. After the week it was serving me ads promoting the sexual exploitation of children. One ad showed me a girl who was 7 or 8 years old, and there’s a text on the ad which says she has been unboxed and reduced to tears with a big weapon. I reported this ad to Instagram. They reviewed it, but said it did not violate guidelines and hadn’t been removed. Meta acknowledged its ad review process may not detect all policy violations, but denied knowingly targeting ads featuring child exploitation to users. We spoke to one of the people who helped build Meta’s ad business. He left in 2020 and has since testified against the company on child safety issues.
Brian Boland: My opinion is they don’t care about the users anywhere, which is why I quit the company. I think what’s sad and tragic is over time, the trade off of revenue and safety or revenue and user experience became a more core part of the conversation.
BBC reporter: I went to Mumbai tech week to ask the head of Meta in India for answers. Mr. Srinivas, I’m from BBC and we have discovered that Instagram has got pornography and child sexual abuse videos as ads on its platform, sir. Will you agree for an interview and speak to us about it? Sir, this is causing harm to children in the real world. Meta told the BBC they fight child exploitation on their platforms, remove ads that violate their policies and report such content to the authorities. They said they had removed content flagged by the BBC and denied prioritizing revenue over user safety.
