BBC finds Instagram ran ads pointing users to child sexual abuse material in India

A BBC investigation found that Instagram, owned by Meta, was serving advertisements that steered users toward child sexual abuse material, with the illicit content hosted on the messaging platform Telegram. The ads were surfaced to users in India, where the platform has one of its largest audiences.

The finding points to a gap in Meta’s paid-advertising review rather than its organic-content systems: ads are screened before they run and are a channel the company controls directly, so material of this kind clearing that filter suggests automated checks failed to catch coded or indirect promotion. The routing to Telegram is a common evasion tactic, keeping the illegal files off the host platform while using its ad tools for reach.

Read the source