Washington-based Tech Transparency Project identified 332 paid adverts featuring child sexual abuse imagery on Facebook and Instagram over a ten-month period, and reported them to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The vast majority of those creatives appeared in August, when TTP found 274 ads running. Of the total pool, TTP says 84 ran in India, and 78 of those ran after New Delhi issued its order to remove such ads and related content from Instagram.
TTP, a research initiative of the Campaign for Accountability, says nearly every flagged creative started from a real photograph of a child that had been altered by artificial intelligence to depict a graphic sexual act as the clip played. The researchers also flagged cases where photos of actual children, including a member of a European royal family, were used and then manipulated. One example described by TTP that ran in India used a preteen girl’s photo animated into a graphic act and featured a voiceover promising unrestricted options; more than 50 different account handles posted that creative in India over a two-week span in August, TTP says.
Using Meta’s ad-reporting tools, TTP says it filed reports for 55 of the 84 India-targeted ads. For 43 reports Meta replied the creatives did not breach the company’s Advertising Standards, 11 were told the content had already been removed, and one report drew no response. TTP says that when it contacted Meta directly, the ads it flagged were ultimately taken down.
Just Rights for Children, a network of more than 250 organisations, has taken legal action in India’s Supreme Court seeking directions to force platforms to identify and report those promoting child sexual abuse material. Bhuwan Ribhu, the group's founder, said, "Social media companies are clearly flouting Indian laws by not reporting child sexual abuse content to Indian law enforcement agencies as mandated by our child protection laws." National bodies including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Human Rights Commission are examining the material.
Meta told investigators it does not tolerate "nudify apps or any kind of child exploitation, whether real or AI-generated," and that it reports apparent child exploitation to NCMEC in compliance with legal obligations. The company added it operates systems to block violating ads and conducts ongoing monitoring, and noted many of the adverts flagged had fewer than 200 impressions and the total ad spend was under $5,000. Activists say those measures are insufficient and are pressing for mandatory local reporting and for platforms to identify offenders, as the next legal steps.
