New Delhi: A BBC World Service report that demonstrates an Indian user account was “pushed” to find more child and adult sex and abuse advertising on Instagram, followed by a stern note from the Indian government asking for action against such content, has prompted Meta to respond with steps it has taken to curtail the abuse by advertisers on its platform.On Tuesday, July 7, 2026, Meta said in a blog post that it has blocked over 1,60,000 such advertiser accounts in India over the last year. It also said Meta had removed “36 million pieces of content” (not accounts) globally last year that specificially had content explotative of children. It removed 4 million accounts globally, Meta said.Acknowleding the BBC report without naming the platform, Meta said it had been made aware of the concerns about “Instagram ads in India that violated our policies against child exploitation”.“And we want to be clear: we take these concerns seriously, we never want this content on our platforms, and we’re committed to improving our efforts to combat it,” it said.“We’re in a constant battle with criminals who hide among our 3.5 billion users and try to evade our detection,” the statement said, detailing the steps it takes to prevent and control illegal and abusive content on Instagram.Experts on cybercrime cited by BBC for its story said Meta’s platform receives a high number of complaints from users also because of the large scale of its operations in India.A report on CNBC (US) said in May that in an earnings report from April 2026, Meta said that nearly 98% of its $56.3 billion in first-quarter revenue came from advertising .BBC’s reportThe BBC report, published Friday (July 3), was based on an Instagram account that staffers created to assess Meta’s response to advertisememts featuring or linking to child abuse content: It took Meta 24 hours to respond to the user’s complaint, the report says.When BBC reached out to Meta, the company said it had removed the reported content, as well as other content violating its policies and reported the accounts.“The BBC reported an advert to Instagram showing a very young girl in tears, with wording indicating that she had been sexually assaulted,” said the report.“But 24 hours later, Instagram replied saying it hadn’t removed the advert because ‘our review team found that the advertiser’s ad does not go against our community standards’,” it says.“Meta later told the BBC that ‘no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations’,” BBC reported.Meta emphasised in its response to BBC that it runs “proactive detection technology on ads once they’re live” and “anyone can report an ad to us that they think breaks our rules”.“It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest. Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children, and we automatically removed over four million of these accounts last year,” the company said.India’s actionMeanwhile on Friday, July 3, soon after the BBC report was published, the Indian government sought action from Meta, which owns Instagram, WhatsApp as well as Facebook, to remove offensive, sexualised and illegal content related to children.Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw directed officials to “summon” Meta over the report. The ministry will demand a formal explanation from the company “within seven days” how such advertisements were allowed to appear on the platform.Earlier on July 1, the ministry had instructed Meta to not roll out its new privacy feature allowing WhatsApp users to present themselves as a username rather than a phone number, saying it would boost scammers who exploit the platform.Meta said in the statement that the 1,60,000 accounts removed in India were the work of AI tools set up for the task. It said human reviewers are also involved in assessing content against its policies.The Financial Times has reported that Meta is moving away from human content reviewers towards AI tools, in a “cost-cutting drive“.29 US states move against MetaOn June 30, a US court refused to stop a lawsuit by 29 US state attorney generals, “accusing it of designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children and knowingly concealing the harm from the public,” reports Reuters.“The AGs present a reasonable interpretation of [Meta’s] statements that Facebook and Instagram are not designed in ways that cause teens to compulsively use the platforms to their detriment,” the judge wrote.The judge also said Meta did not comply with the notice and parental consent requirements of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (a federal US law) and granted summary judgment to the states on that issue.Reuters reported Meta’s statement that it “strongly disagreed” with the allegations and that it was committed to “supporting young people”.