NEW DELHI: Meta will begin reporting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) directly to Indian law enforcement agencies from Tuesday, a move experts said could strengthen enforcement against online child exploitation but is unlikely to set a broader precedent for other social-media violations.
The parent of Instagram and Facebook has so far been required under US law to report CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), a private, non-profit US organization. The new approach will see Meta report child-safety matters directly to the cybercrime portal run by India’s Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre (I4C).
In a statement Tuesday, a Meta India spokesperson said the company regarded as a “priority” and was “committed to working with the government to ensure that the perpetrators of these crimes are held responsible.”
“To collectively strengthen our efforts to combat this harm, will now report child safety matters directly to the cyber crime portal managed by I4C (Indian Cybercrime Coordination Centre),” the statement read.
The shift comes as Meta faces growing scrutiny in India over its handling of CSAM. In early August, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology () summoned Joel Kaplan, Meta’s president of global affairs, over the company showing CSAM advertisements on Facebook and Instagram.
Meta, the $1.7-trillion Big Tech company, has published monthly content-action reports since June 2021. In its latest report, published on 31 August, child endangerment was the third-most reported form of violative content across Instagram and Facebook, with nearly 1.95 million reports in July 2026.
Compliance shift
Legal and policy experts said the move addresses a specific requirement under India’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, rather than signalling a wider change in how Meta handles policy violations in India.
“Tuesday’s policy stance shift from mandatory reporting in the US to India is because of the country’s Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012, which requires any entity to directly report CSAM material to law enforcement agencies. The policy only ensures Meta is in compliance with India’s child sexual abuse content regulations—and is not a precedent for India’s overall social media intermediary policy as a whole,” said Aparajita Bharti, founding partner of tech policy think-tank, The Quantum Hub.
In India, social-media platforms, or ‘intermediaries’, are largely regulated under the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000, which contains multiple law-enforcement compliance requirements based on violations.
Welcoming Tuesday’s move, a Meity official, who was not authorized to comment, said India’s online child-safety regulation “is a fundamental principle for any social media to operate in India, and it is non-negotiable.”
“Meta has agreed to report child safety-related matters to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. It is a first step toward making the platforms safe for children, and much more needs to be done. The government shall take action against platforms that do not take proactive steps for the safety of children,” the official added.
The move is unlikely to extend to other categories of content, including sexual content more broadly, political content, or other forms of harm and abuse.
“Meta’s new policy on Tuesday is a response to the fact that information relay via NCMEC, even through its international arms, takes too long to report. Given that CSAM perpetrators are typically moving targets behind invisible digital blinds, the reporting procedure often failed to help law enforcement agencies crack down on actual targets,” TQH’s Bharti added.