Meta Acted on 5.3 Million Child Abuse Content Pieces in India in H1 2026

Meta on Wednesday said it acted on 5.3 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content in India during the first half of 2026, while rolling out new artificial intelligence tools to detect advertisements that covertly direct users to illegal material.

The company said more than 98 per cent of such content on Facebook and Instagram in India was detected and addressed proactively, before it was reported by users.

Globally, Meta acted on 33.2 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content across Facebook and Instagram between January and June, with more than 97 per cent identified proactively, it said in a blog post. Meta said predators have increasingly shifted their tactics to advertising, where an advertisement may appear harmless but can direct users to child abuse material hosted outside its platforms.

After identifying such schemes, the company said it expanded investigations beyond individual advertisements reported to it, disabled accounts linked to the activity and blocked the off-platform links involved. As part of its latest measures, Meta has deployed a large language model-based system to detect "signposting" -- advertisements that appear benign but are suspected of directing users towards illegal content.

The company has also strengthened its ability to assess where an advertisement leads, rather than relying solely on the content displayed in the ad. AI-driven sweeps have been introduced to identify material that may have escaped earlier detection systems. Meta said it is additionally using a red-teaming AI agent to test its own safeguards for vulnerabilities and has improved systems to identify banned users attempting to create new accounts.

"Keeping young people safe on our apps is among the most important work we do, and it never stops," Meta said. The disclosure comes amid a government crackdown on child sexual abuse material in India.

In July, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a notice to Meta over such advertisements on Instagram and summoned its global executives to India. Meta has since agreed to report child-safety cases directly to the I4C cybercrime portal.