New Delhi — Meta has introduced new AI-powered safeguards aimed at strengthening efforts to detect and remove child sexual exploitation content across Facebook and Instagram.
The company said it took action against 5.3 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content in India during the first six months of 2026, with more than 98 percent detected and addressed proactively before users reported it.
“Between January to June 2026, we actioned 5.3 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content on Facebook and Instagram in India, with over 98 per cent found and proactively addressed before anyone reported it,” Meta said.
Globally, the company said it acted against 33.2 million pieces of such content on Facebook and Instagram during the same period, with more than 97 percent identified proactively.
Meta said online predators are increasingly using more sophisticated methods to evade detection, including advertisements that appear harmless but direct users to illegal content hosted outside its platforms.
To address the problem, the company said it has upgraded its advertising review systems and deployed additional artificial intelligence tools to improve detection.
The new safeguards include large language model-based systems designed to identify so-called “signposting” content that may appear benign but is suspected of directing users to child sexual exploitation material or other harmful activity.
Meta said it has also improved its ability to evaluate the destinations of advertisements, allowing it to block links leading to violative content and take action against accounts responsible for distributing them.
“Once a link is blocked, we search for and then delete other content – such as ads, posts or comments – that contain the link,” Meta said. “We take steps to prevent people from posting content containing a blocked link on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and ads containing blocked links would be rejected at upload.” (Source: IANS)
