Meta Under Fire in India and Australia Over Online Harms

Meta Faces New Pressure Abroad Over Child Safety and Hate Speech

Meta is confronting a widening wave of scrutiny in two important foreign markets, as officials in India and Australia press the company over whether its platforms are failing to prevent some of the most harmful material online.

In India, the government has demanded answers after reports that Instagram carried paid advertisements promoting or facilitating access to child sexual abuse material. In Australia, a senior Meta executive was questioned by a royal commission examining whether the company’s decision to scale back parts of its moderation system left antisemitic content more visible on Facebook and Instagram.

The two inquiries arise from different crises, but together they underscore a common problem for Meta: governments are increasingly testing whether the company’s lighter-touch approach to content policing can withstand political and legal scrutiny when the harms involve children or hate speech.

India Orders Action After Instagram Ad Reports

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered Meta to disable Instagram ads and related content that promoted or enabled access to child sexual exploitative and abuse material, after a BBC investigation found such paid ads appearing to users in India. The ministry also sought a detailed response from the company within seven days.

Meta said it maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward child sexual abuse material and had removed some of the ads and associated accounts.

The episode has drawn particular alarm because it appears to involve not only user-generated content, long a thorny challenge for social platforms, but also failures in paid advertising review. According to the reporting that prompted the government’s intervention, some ads used explicit terms and directed users toward Telegram channels allegedly selling abuse material.

That distinction may prove important. Regulators have often tolerated company claims that policing billions of user posts is difficult at scale. Paid ads, by contrast, pass through systems that platforms more directly control. If Indian authorities conclude that ads were approved and distributed despite obvious warning signs, the case could sharpen questions about Meta’s ad-screening systems, recommendation tools and compliance with intermediary obligations.

India is a particularly consequential battleground for the company. It is Meta’s largest market by users across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the government has shown a growing willingness to demand faster removals and more visible accountability from major technology firms.

Australian Inquiry Focuses on Moderation Rollback

In Australia, Meta is being challenged on a different front: whether changes it made last year to reduce what it described as over-enforcement allowed more hateful content to circulate.

At a hearing on Sunday before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, a Meta policy executive faced questions from commissioners and counsel about the company’s January 2025 moderation changes. Those changes included eliminating outside fact-checkers in some areas, narrowing proactive enforcement to illegal and very serious violations, and relying more heavily on users to report other problematic content.

Lawyers assisting the commission pointed to data showing sharp declines in hate-speech removals on Facebook and Instagram after the policy shift. The implication raised at the hearing was that less aggressive moderation may have left more antisemitic material online, even as Meta argued that the figures did not prove a corresponding rise in antisemitic content.

The company has defended the changes as an effort to avoid mistaken takedowns that can suppress legitimate speech, including speech from vulnerable communities. But the hearing suggested that Australian investigators are weighing whether the pendulum swung too far, especially at a time of heightened concern over antisemitism online.

The royal commission, established in January 2026, is expected to deliver a final report by Dec. 14. Its findings will not themselves rewrite the law, but such commissions often shape policy recommendations, enforcement priorities and the broader political climate for regulation.

Why the Cases Matter

For Meta, the immediate risks are different in each country. In India, the central question is whether the government will move beyond demands for explanation and removal to impose penalties or new obligations tied to ad approval and platform safety. In Australia, the issue is whether the commission concludes that Meta’s moderation retrenchment materially worsened users’ exposure to antisemitic content, potentially accelerating calls for stricter platform duties.

Taken together, though, the matters strike at two of the most politically combustible issues facing social media companies: child protection and hate speech. They also test whether Meta can maintain a moderation strategy built around narrower proactive enforcement while persuading regulators that its systems still catch the gravest abuses.

That challenge has become more acute as governments increasingly focus not just on what users post, but on what platforms recommend, amplify and monetize. In India, the concern is that abusive networks may have exploited Instagram’s advertising machinery. In Australia, investigators are probing whether reduced intervention effectively allowed harmful content to remain visible longer or spread more broadly.

For years, Meta has argued that it invests heavily in safety and that it must balance enforcement with free expression. The company now faces a harder question from regulators abroad: whether that balance is being struck at the expense of users most at risk.

The answer, and whether Meta responds with broad global changes or only country-specific fixes, could help determine how much latitude large platforms retain as governments move from criticism to action.