Now, Google Agrees To Report Child Abuse Content To Indian Authorities: Report

After Meta, tech giant Google has reportedly has agreed to report child abuse content hosted on its platforms to appropriate law enforcement agencies in India.

The central government has increased its scrutiny on tech platforms in a bid to safeguard children. 

Authorities are urging tech giants such as Google and Microsoft to report child abuse content involving India directly, Reuters reported citing government sources, amid concerns that the existing reporting system causes significant delays.

Google has increased its investments significantly to detect, deter, remove, and report child sexual abuse ​material. To note, the company regularly takes down hundreds of thousands of pieces of content and accounts in India via automated detection tools to prevent the spread of CSAM and extremist material.

As of the last available public record, January 2024 saw Google take 63,975 removal actions following user complaints in India, with copyright accounting for 61,180 of them.

Inc42 has reached out to Google for comments on the development. The story will be updated based on their response.

The government and regulatory bodies are closely monitoring social media intermediaries’ social media platforms regarding their content moderation policies and legal compliance. It has warned that action would be taken against platforms that fail to introduce adequate measures to protect children online.

The development comes about a week after social media major Meta agreed to report instances of child sexual abuse to the appropriate law enforcement agencies in India. One unresolved issue is the persistence of harmful AI-generated material. The government has questioned why such content can reappear after being flagged, and why AI-generated videos without appropriate labels remain accessible on Meta’s platforms.

In an earlier meeting, officials also pressed Meta to increase human oversight of content moderation, particularly for Indian languages and material shaped by local cultural and social contexts.

To protect children from predatory practices online, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued notices to multiple social media platforms to remove child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their websites in 2023, and warned that non-compliance with the order will entail strict action, including withdrawal of safe harbour protections.

Meanwhile, the Gujarat High Court (HC) issued notices to global tech giants Meta, Google, X, Reddit and Scribd in a case pertaining to the spread of AI-generated content hosted on these platforms, earlier in April.

The petition flagged the growing circulation of AI-generated videos online, warning that the “widespread creation and circulation of AI generated videos on digital platforms” poses a “serious threat to public order and functioning of a healthy democracy.”

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