A BBC investigation has claimed that Instagram displayed paid ads linked to child sexual abuse material on a test account in India, alongside adult explicit content. The report said some ads directed users to Telegram channels. Meta said it removed flagged content and disabled accounts, calling the characterisation ‘categorically inaccurate.’
Instagram has reportedly been running paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material to users in India. The probe found that ads directing users to purchase such content on messaging app Telegram were appearing on the platform despite Meta’s own policies requiring every advertisement to be reviewed before publication. Meta has disputed the characterisation of its practices while confirming it took down some of the flagged content.
According to reportage by BBC, the investigation began after reporters noticed Instagram was surfacing sexually suggestive content on a test account even without the user searching for it. The BBC set up an alias account based in India and followed a set of accounts posting sexualised content to observe how the platform’s advertising system responded.
Within a week, the account began receiving advertisements featuring explicit adult content. Days later, the investigation found, the platform began showing ads depicting children in sexually suggestive situations alongside adults, with links directing users to Telegram channels where the material could reportedly be purchased. BBC said around 30 unique advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material appeared over the course of the investigation, along with about 20 ads featuring adult pornography.
When BBC reported one such advertisement directly to Instagram, the platform responded roughly 24 hours later stating that the post did not violate its community guidelines, the investigation found. It was only after BBC approached Meta, Instagram’s parent company, for formal comment that the company said it had disabled several of the advertisements and suspended the accounts responsible for posting them.
Meta told BBC it had since removed additional ads, disabled more accounts and blocked URLs linked to policy-violating content in response to the investigation’s findings. The company said in a statement that “child exploitation is a horrific crime and Meta works aggressively to fight it on our apps,” and pushed back on the suggestion that it had knowingly or deliberately targeted such ads at users with an inappropriate interest in the material, calling that characterisation “categorically inaccurate.”
Meta said it had automatically disabled more than four million accounts in 2025 for exhibiting signals of suspicious behaviour, and maintained that it does not prioritise revenue over user safety. The company added that it reports apparent child exploitation cases to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as required by law.
On the specific advertisement BBC had flagged and which was initially left up, Meta later said that “no system is perfect, and our review process may not detect all policy violations,” adding that it runs proactive detection technology on ads once they go live and that users can report ads they believe break platform rules.
Telegram’s response
BBC also reported two Telegram channels it found selling the material. One was taken down and replaced with a notice stating it had violated Telegram’s terms of service, while the other continued posting new content, according to the investigation. Telegram told BBC it uses a combination of automated and human moderation to remove child sexual abuse material from the app, and said it has ‘virtually eliminated the public spread of CSAM from its platform.’ The company separately said it removed more than 274,000 groups and channels linked to such material in 2026. BBC noted that Telegram, unlike many major platforms, is not a member of either NCMEC or the Internet Watch Foundation.
