Social media companies warned of strict action over child abuse content

Social media companies Telegram, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) may have to face strict action over their failure to remove violent pornographic content, including child and adult sexual abuse material, from their platforms, said Union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw.

"This is a very serious issue. If platforms don't act with alacrity on protecting the privacy of users, especially children, strict action will be taken against them," Vaishnaw told ET, urging the social media companies to comply with the government's directive in this regard.

The electronics and information technology ministry had sent notices to these companies a week ago, asking them to remove all child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from their platforms.


"The notices were sent on October 6 and these platforms were given four days to respond and confirm that they have cleaned up CSAM content from their platforms," the minister of state for electronics and information technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar told ET.

"CSAM content and other criminal content attract penalties under various laws like POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) and IPC (Indian Penal Code)."

Among the three companies, Telegram sent a "template response", without listing the specific steps it had taken despite the ministry's repeated demands, said an official, who did not wish to be identified. YouTube and X have so far not responded to the ministry's notices asking them to detail the action taken on CSAM and other obscene content.

"Under the IT Rules, the obligations on the platforms are very clear - that they block such content and identify the person(s) violating the laws under traceability obligation in IT rules. If this isn't complied with, the law is clear and Rule 7 will be invoked, Section 79 immunity of platforms will be waived," Chandrasekhar said, adding that any parent or anyone aggrieved by CSAM on these platforms can file a first information report (FIR) against the platform and that in turn could lead to potential penalties under law.

In its response on Friday, Telegram said it forbade illegal pornography and child abuse material, while YouTube did not respond to specific queries seeking to know their response to a possible action on their operations in India.

X, formerly Twitter, responds to press and media queries these days with a standard “Busy now, please check back later”.

"When our algorithms catch CSAM, we do not only remove the account or flag it in global databases, we also keep the records for law enforcement agencies to ensure that the culprits are held accountable for their actions," a senior executive at a global social media and internet conglomerate said.

While flagging content such as CSAM, the company chooses to forgo accuracy to ensure the net is cast wide so that the maximum amount of such content is taken off the internet, the executive said.

The notices to platforms were sent a day after ET reached out to senior officials in the IT ministry seeking their comments about the presence of pornographic material and CSAM on the instant messaging app Telegram.

As a part of the first leg of its six-month-long investigation, ET found that pornographic and violent content, including CSAM, was freely available in India and widely disseminated through public and private channels in the form of links to videos and photos.

In comparison, Telegram users who used a telephone number registered with a mobile service provider in the US, the UK, France, or Germany were unable to search for CSAM or adult sexual violence content, the second leg of ET’s investigation has revealed.

The official said that this shows that these platforms don't take the privacy and security of Indian children seriously and think that they can get away with this easily in the country.

Telegram channels, which attempted to disseminate such content were swiftly taken down within 24-48 hours in these countries, ET found. Though these users can easily search for consensually made pornographic content, ET was unable to find any public or private channels in these countries which disseminated CSAM or adult sexual violence content, the investigation revealed.

In India, such objectionable photos, as well as videos, are often stored and hosted on China-based cloud data and digital storage solutions such as RB Disk, Tera Byte, Video Hoot and Kuk Link.