Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India: report

A disturbing new report by US-based campaigners has revealed that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has continued to run hundreds of paid advertisements featuring artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse imagery (CSAM), with a significant number of these appearing in India over the past ten months. This revelation comes just two months after the Indian government issued a directive to Meta, ordering the immediate removal of all ads and content promoting CSAM on Instagram. This governmental action followed a critical BBC Eye investigation that exposed the presence of paid advertisements promoting CSAM on Instagram within India.

The Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a Washington-based research initiative that holds large technology companies accountable, has identified a staggering 332 advertisements containing CSAM that ran on Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram. The majority of these, a concerning 274, were disseminated in August of this year alone. When approached by the BBC for comment regarding these findings, Meta issued a statement asserting, "We don’t tolerate nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated. These criminals constantly shift tactics to evade detection, which is why we keep strengthening our detection and enforcement."

The TTP report, published on Tuesday, details how several of these advertisements incorporated images of real children, including a member of a European royal family, which were subsequently manipulated using artificial intelligence. Alarmingly, the report states that more than a dozen of these advertisements remained visible on Meta’s platforms even after the TTP had alerted the company to its discoveries. A significant portion of these problematic ads, approximately a quarter or 84 in total, ran in India. Of these, a disturbing 78 were published after the Indian government’s explicit order to remove CSAM and subsequent meetings with senior Meta officials.

In the wake of the BBC’s initial investigation, several Indian agencies, including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Human Rights Commission, announced that they were initiating examinations into the matter. The distribution of CSAM is a severe criminal offense in India. Concurrently, Meta’s own policy strictly prohibits advertisements that sexually exploit or endanger children.

When the BBC initially contacted Meta for a statement regarding its investigation, the company indicated that upon becoming aware of apparent child exploitation, it reports such instances to the US-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in compliance with its legal obligations. NCMEC serves as a centralized global reporting system for the online sexual exploitation of children. However, Bhuwan Ribhu, the founder of Just Rights for Children, a network comprising over 250 organizations dedicated to preventing violence against children in India, argues that this reporting mechanism is insufficient.

Just Rights for Children has lodged a petition with India’s Supreme Court, citing the BBC’s findings and requesting judicial directives for social media platforms to implement mandatory reporting and identification protocols for individuals promoting child sexual abuse material. "Social media companies are clearly flouting Indian laws by not reporting child sexual abuse content to Indian law enforcement agencies as mandated by our child protection laws," Ribhu stated emphatically.

The TTP, a research initiative of the non-profit Campaign for Accountability, detailed its findings on Tuesday, reporting the discovery of 332 ads featuring CSAM on Instagram and Facebook. These ads were observed running in the US, UK, EU, Australia, and India. The TTP has submitted reports on all identified ads to NCMEC.

According to the TTP’s analysis, nearly all the ads they encountered began with a photograph of a child. As the video progressed, the image would be manipulated by AI to depict the child engaged in graphic sexual acts. The TTP report described one such ad that ran in India as follows: a photograph of a preteen girl was animated to perform a graphic sex act, accompanied by a voiceover stating, "There are no restrictions. All the characters are real people and there are many options. This is the AI men actually use." The BBC has not independently verified the content of this specific advertisement. The TTP further noted that this particular ad was posted by over 50 different accounts in India over a two-week period in August of this year.

In July, following the BBC’s initial investigation, Meta published a detailed post on its official website outlining its efforts to combat child exploitation across its applications. The company stated, "Anyone on our platforms can report ads if they believe they violate our policies." However, the TTP reported encountering significant challenges when attempting to report these ads through Meta’s own reporting system. Of the 84 ads that ran in India, the TTP was only able to report 55. Meta’s system only provides the option to report ads while they are actively running.

For 43 of these reported ads, the TTP received a response indicating, "We’ve taken a look and found that this ad doesn’t go against our Advertising Standards." For another 11 ads, they were informed that the content had already been removed. A response for one ad remains outstanding. When the BBC reached out to Meta for comment on these specific findings, the company responded, "we’ve built strong defenses, including systems that block violating ads as well as ongoing monitoring in case we initially miss something: that’s why many of the ads flagged to us had already been removed, most had fewer than 200 impressions, and the total ad spend was under $5,000."

The TTP noted that after they reached out to Meta for a response, all the ads they had reported were subsequently removed. This mirrors the experience during the BBC’s earlier investigation. When the BBC utilized Meta’s reporting system to flag an ad featuring child sexual abuse on Instagram, the platform initially failed to remove it. It was only after the BBC contacted Meta for comment that the company stated it had already disabled several adverts and suspended the associated accounts. Meta further claimed it had removed additional ads, disabled more accounts, and blocked URLs for other content violating its policies in response to the BBC’s findings.

The TTP report also alleged that the vast majority of the 332 ads they identified directed users to AI image or video generation applications, predominantly developed by Chinese entities. The report posits that by advertising these applications using images of child sexual abuse, there is an implied suggestion that they can be utilized for the creation or viewing of CSAM. Meta has previously stated that it prohibits the promotion of "nudify" apps, which employ AI to generate fake non-consensual nude or sexually explicit images.

Shikha Goel, a senior cyber police officer and Director of the Cyber Security Bureau in India’s Telangana state, highlighted the challenges in combating CSAM to the BBC. She stated that "the ease with which users can move from one platform to another, making it harder to nab them" is a significant hurdle. She expressed optimism that the government would address these issues in its ongoing interactions with social media intermediaries and issue appropriate directives.

The advertisements previously identified by the BBC investigation also linked users to the messaging app Telegram, where the CSAM material could be purchased for as little as 99 rupees (approximately $1.05 or £0.80). At the time of the BBC’s reporting, Telegram stated that it employs both automated and human moderation to combat CSAM, asserting that it has "virtually eliminated the public spread of CSAM" on its platform.

It is important to note that ads on Meta’s platforms undergo an approval process, initially reviewed by its moderation technology. This system relies heavily on automation to scrutinize images, video, text, and audio content, as well as targeting information and destination links. Following the BBC’s investigation, Meta acknowledged that "no system is perfect" and that "determined criminals continue to try to exploit our platform, including through our advertising systems."

However, the TTP’s findings are particularly concerning as they revealed that several of the ads featuring child sexual abuse were placed by Meta’s own ad agency partners in China. These partners, known as "resellers," facilitate billions of dollars worth of Chinese advertising onto Facebook and Instagram. These partners did not respond to the TTP’s inquiries. The TTP further reported that new ads continued to appear on Meta’s platforms even after they had informed the company of their report’s findings, sharing details of 17 additional ads, including 11 that ran in India on September 1st and 2nd.