NCPCR summons Meta India head Arun Srinivas again over CSAM issue

The child rights body has summoned Meta India head Arun Srinivas as part of its formal inquiry into alleged lapses in the company's policies on child safety and CSAM

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has once again summoned Meta India head Arun Srinivas on Wednesday for a hearing in the formal inquiry that had been instituted by the child rights body against Meta over its alleged failure to contain child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platforms.

 

Earlier this month, the child rights body had decided to institute a formal inquiry into alleged lapses in Meta India’s policies on child safety and the platform’s lack of action on CSAM.

 

The decision to institute a formal inquiry was taken after the NCPCR expressed dissatisfaction with the responses given by Meta.

 

 

An email sent to both Meta and Capgemini seeking their responses did not elicit any response.

 

In July this year, Meta’s video- and image-sharing platform Instagram came under the government’s scrutiny after reports emerged that the platform was allowing advertisements promoting CSAM.

 

Following the reports, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology summoned Meta India executives and sought their response on the issue.

 

In response, Meta said it had removed 160,000 accounts for hosting and sharing “suspicious off-platform links in coordination with other signals indicating child exploitative activity”.

 

Overall, Meta, which has WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Threads under its umbrella, said it had automatically removed more than 4 million suspicious accounts from Facebook and Instagram, in addition to 36 million pieces of content containing child exploitation.