Instagram served child abuse ads in India, BBC investigation finds

Instagram served paid advertisements in India promoting child sexual abuse material despite its own strict rules barring such content, a BBC investigation found.

According to the investigation, the ads included terms like "rape video" and "child video", and linked to Telegram channels where users could buy the content for as little as 99 rupees (roughly $1).

The BBC set up a test account in India after noticing that the platform was pushing sexually suggestive content, even without a user’s request.

It took less than a week for the account to start receiving sexual advertisements of women offering video calls and “showing clearly naked couples having sex”, the publication says. Days later, advertisements started showing children with adults in sexually suggestive situations.

The BBC recorded 30 unique adverts that seemingly promoted child sexual abuse material, with links to Telegram channels. It said that 20 more ads shown to the account featured adult pornography.

Ads were reported to the Indian government, which said it had summoned the representatives of Meta, Instagram’s parent company, over the investigation. Late on Saturday, the technology ministry told Meta to disable all advertisements and other content that involves abuse and sexual exploitation of children, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.

Meta’s Advertising Policy has a section on sexually suggestive content, which details that ads “must not contain imagery depicting nudity, sexual activity, depictions of people in explicit or sexually suggestive positions, or activities that are sexually suggestive.”

The company has a review process in place to screen ads before they are published. The system primarily relies on automated checks, and a human reviewer is involved if the system is uncertain.

The BBC reported one ad potentially associated with child sexual abuse to Instagram and received a response that Instagram hadn’t removed the ad because "our review team found that the advertiser's ad does not go against our community standards".

Later, the company said that "no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations".

"We continue to run proactive detection technology on ads once they're live, and anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules."

Meta

The company added that it reports potential abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for investigation.

When the BBC later asked Meta for a comment, the company said it had disabled some of the ads, as well as the accounts behind them. It had also removed and blocked additional URLs and accounts that violated its policies in response to the investigation.

Two channels were also reported to Telegram for selling child abuse videos – one was taken down for the platform’s terms violations, but the other continued to post new videos for sale.

Telegram told the BBC that it has "virtually eliminated the public spread of CSAM from its platform" thanks to its automated and human moderation.

According to the publication’s cited data, India received 1.9 million reports of potential child sexual abuse material in 2025, second only to the US at 2 million.