Warning: This story contains descriptions of abuse
Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India, a BBC Eye investigation has found.
The ads, seen by the BBC World Service, use terms including "rape video" and "child video" and link users to channels on the messaging app Telegram, where they can buy the material for as little as 99 rupees (about 80p).
Hours after this investigation was published, the Indian government said it had summoned representatives of Instagram's parent company, Meta, over the adverts.
Ads on Instagram are only published after first being approved by its moderation technology.
When the BBC reported one of the ads to Instagram, the social media platform responded 24 hours later saying the post did not violate its "community guidelines".
Later, when the BBC asked Meta for comment, it said it had already disabled several adverts and suspended the accounts posting them. The company said it had removed additional ads, disabled more accounts and blocked URLs for other content that violated its policies in response to the BBC's findings.
Telegram said it had removed more than 274,000 groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026.
The BBC set up an alias account on Instagram after we noticed that the platform was pushing sexually suggestive content, even when a user hadn't searched for such material.
This included women posting about food, weather and daily life in India, who were dressed in revealing clothing and using sexual innuendo in their posts.
The new alias account, which was set up in India, started following these women and other similar people - 10 in all - to investigate sexualised content on the platform.
In less than a week, Instagram started showing advertisements on the feed featuring women offering video calls and showing clearly naked couples having sex.
Days later, it began showing adverts of children with adults in sexually suggestive situations, with links to Telegram channels.
yosarian_reddit on July 3rd, 2026 at 13:57 UTC »
When algorithms ‘approve’ ads instead of humans this kind of thing is inevitable
Hay_Fever_at_3_AM on July 3rd, 2026 at 13:51 UTC »
Well. I guess Meta is a CSAM platform, they even said it. Of course they'll never get in trouble for this because money.
RockoRockyBoxxyMan on July 3rd, 2026 at 13:26 UTC »
I really wish I could say this is shocking.