A day after the Centre issued a notice to Meta over allegedly targeting Instagram users with child sexual abuse advertisements, the tech firm has categorically rejected the assertions that it did so knowingly.
In a blog post, Meta, which owns social media platform Instagram, said that child exploitation is a “horrific crime” and that its team works aggressively to fight this kind of abuse both on and off its platforms.
Acknowledging the reports about Instagram ads in India that violated its policies against child exploitation, Meta clarified that it has taken the concerns seriously, adding that “we never want this content on our platforms, and we’re committed to improving our efforts to combat it.”
Meta further claimed that its enforcement systems had already identified and disabled several ads and accounts that violated its policies related to child exploitation before they were reported by the media.
“Our subsequent investigation led to additional action, including removing further ads, disabling accounts, and blocking URLs linked to policy-violating content,” Meta said.
The tech giant further stated that suggestions that it “knowingly and deliberately” targeted ads featuring children to people based on their “inappropriate interest in children” are categorically inaccurate.
“It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we’d knowingly and deliberately target ads 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,” the Meta blog read.
The response from Meta comes a day after the Centre issued a notice to the US-based firm to disable the ads and accounts allegedly promoting child sexual exploitation.