The Indian government has warned that it will take action against two of Meta's three major platforms - WhatsApp and Instagram - within a week, highlighting the rising regulatory risks faced by the US social media giant in this core market.
India's state-run media India National Television reported that India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology issued a stern notice to Meta on Saturday due to the presence of objectionable material related to child sexual exploitation and abuse in paid ads on Instagram.
According to the report, the Indian government asked Instagram to "immediately remove all advertisements and related content promoting child abuse" and asked Meta to submit a detailed explanation within seven days.
Indian regulators issued the warning to Meta after a BBC investigation on Friday revealed that Instagram ran paid ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India.
A Meta spokesperson said via email that the company has a "zero-tolerance policy" for content involving child abuse. The spokesman added that companies are using artificial intelligence technology to proactively identify illegal content and related accounts, but criminals are hiding among the platform’s 3.5 billion users and finding ways to avoid system screening. The game between the two parties has never stopped.
Earlier this year, the European Commission found the social media giant violated EU regulations by failing to prevent children under 13 from logging onto its platform. Although Meta disagrees with the preliminary investigation conclusion, if the violation is ultimately determined, the company may face a fine of up to 6% of global annual turnover.
The U.S. company will not face immediate fines in India for now, but Meta is under intense scrutiny from regulators in its largest market by users. Data from the statistics platform Statista shows that as of 2025, India is the market with the largest number of Instagram users in the world, with over 480 million users, more than twice the number of users in the United States; at the same time, Facebook has over 400 million users in India, ranking first in the world.
Neil Shah, Vice President of Counterpoint Research, a market research organization, said that this incident has sounded the alarm for Meta, and companies must strengthen platform compliance control. The Indian government is intending to tighten regulatory constraints on large digital platforms.
Last week, Meta’s messaging app WhatsApp, which has more than 500 million users in India, also received regulatory warnings for launching a username function. The Indian government said that this feature may encourage cybercrime and ordered the platform to suspend related online plans.
Meta defended the username feature, saying it was an important privacy tool that allowed users to establish contact without providing a mobile phone number.
Rima Bhattacharya, head of Asia research at Verisk Maplecroft, a risk analysis agency, said: "It is not so much that the regulatory environment in the Indian market is hostile, but that the regulatory requirements here are more stringent." She added that as India is an important digital market, companies should expect regulatory agencies to increase supervision on various issues such as online security and data governance.