Meta opens direct route to I4C on CSAM
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has agreed to report child safety-related matters directly to the cybercrime portal operated by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), marking a major change in how the company handles such cases in India.
This development comes as the Government is putting more pressure on social media companies to improve their safeguards, respond faster to harmful content, and take greater responsibility, especially when it comes to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and other illegal online activities.
A Meta spokesperson said that protecting children on its platforms is a top priority.
“We are committed to working with the Government to make sure that those who commit these crimes are held accountable and to strengthen our efforts to combat this harm jointly. Meta will now report child safety issues directly to the cybercrime portal run by I4C,” a spokesperson for the company said. Meta is the first major global technology company to promise a direct reporting route to Indian law enforcement.
Until now, the company mostly sent CSAM reports through the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Indian authorities have criticised this process for adding extra steps between the platforms and local investigators. Government sources said that children’s online safety is a “fundamental principle” for any social media platform in India and called it “non-negotiable”.
Sources cautioned that the Government will act against platforms that do not take proactive measures to protect children online. They said the Union Government is still in contact with other platforms to ensure they identify and remove such content themselves. The officials referred to Meta’s commitment as an initial step toward making platforms safer for children, while stressing that much more remains to be done.
This announcement follows several months of closer scrutiny. The Government has sent notices to Meta about how it handles harmful and illegal content, including CSAM and deepfakes, and had recently summoned the company’s top executives to India.
In July, following a BBC Eye investigation into paid advertisements on Instagram used to promote and access CSAM, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) sent a notice to Meta.
The ministry instructed Instagram to switch off those advertisements and asked for a full explanation. It said it had held several rounds of talks with Meta’s top executives and made it clear that such content cannot benefit from safe-harbour protection.
The National Human Rights Commission separately directed Delhi Police to investigate whether Meta had complied with mandatory reporting obligations under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and issued a follow-up notice in early August seeking action-taken reports from MeitY, police authorities and Meta.
This month, the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) summoned the head of Meta India as part of an investigation into advertisements allegedly linked to CSAM.
The I4C, set up by the Ministry of Home Affairs, runs the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal, which focuses on crimes against women and children.
It has also set up the Sahyog portal so content takedown requests can go directly to the right platforms. Intermediaries have been told to appoint nodal officers to report cases of child sexual abuse material and to use artificial intelligence tools to find and remove such content. With direct reporting to the I4C portal, Indian authorities can now get child safety cases without first going through an overseas group. Officials say this change is meant to speed up investigations and make enforcement stronger against those who produce, share, or benefit from this material.
