Meta agrees to report child safety cases to law enforcement agencies

Meta has agreed to report cases related to child sexual abuse and other child safety concerns to the appropriate law enforcement agencies in India as the government steps up pressure on social media platforms to take stronger measures to protect children online, government sources said on Tuesday.

The sources said the government was continuously engaging with social media platforms to curb harmful and illegal information and ensure a safer online environment for children. “The online safety of children is a fundamental principle for any social media platform to operate in India and it is non-negotiable,” they said.

Officials said Meta’s decision to report child safety-related matters to law enforcement agencies was an important step, but stressed that significantly more needed to be done to address risks faced by children online. They also said it remained engaged with other social media platforms to encourage them to proactively identify and remove harmful content involving children.

The government has warned that platforms that fail to take proactive measures to protect children online will face appropriate government action.

The latest development follows a meeting in August between the representatives of Meta and the government where a range of issues were discussed, including compliance with Indian laws, safeguards for the removal of posts involving prominent personalities and concerns over child sexual abuse material. During the meeting, the government had also asked Meta executives to demonstrate in specific terms how their platforms were complying with Indian laws with respect to freedom of expression, privacy, content moderation and trust around digital spaces. “You cannot run your platform in India and follow the US Constitution,” sources had said at the time.

In July, a Meta team had met Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) officials after a notice was issued to them by the government on the issue of the rollout of the 'usernames' feature on WhatsApp in India. The concerns of the government related to the feature were clearly informed to the team.

Meanwhile, child rights watchdog NCPCR has again summoned Meta India’s managing director over objectionable advertisements.