India accounted for 5.3 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content acted on by Meta in the first half of 2026, with more than 98 per cent of the material detected proactively before it was reported, the company said on Wednesday.
Meta said it had acted on 5.3 million such items across Facebook and Instagram in India between January and June. Globally, it took action against 33.2 million pieces of child sexual exploitation content during the period, with more than 97 per cent detected proactively.
The company also announced new AI tools to identify advertisements that appear innocuous but may covertly direct users to child sexual abuse material hosted outside its platforms.
Meta said it had found that predators were increasingly using advertising to evade detection, with seemingly harmless ads being used to funnel users to illegal content on external websites.
After identifying such activity, Meta said it expanded its investigation beyond the ads initially flagged, disabled the accounts involved and blocked the links leading to off-platform content.
The new safeguards include a large language model designed to detect "signposting", ad content that appears benign but is suspected of directing users to illegal material.
Meta said it had also improved its ability to assess where an advertisement leads, rather than focusing only on its content, and deployed AI-driven sweeps to identify material missed by earlier systems.
It is also using an AI-based red-teaming agent to test its safety systems for weaknesses and has strengthened measures to detect banned users attempting to create new accounts.
"Keeping young people safe on our apps is among the most important work we do, and it never stops," Meta said.
(With inputs from PTI)
