Government issued notice to remove Child Sexual Abuse Material from X, Telegram and YouTube

The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has taken strict actions against the posting/publication of Child Sexual Abuse Material(CSAM) on various social media platforms.

The ministry on Friday issued a notice to social media platforms including X(Twitter), Telegram and YouTube to take down material/content of Child Sexual Abuse in India.

The union ministry wants to the platforms to take down any such content as soon as possible with responsibility. Unable to take actions against these will result in the ministry  taking action  against them.  MeitY also said that “delay in complying with the notices will result in the withdrawal of their safe harbour protection under Section 79 of the IT Act”.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister of state for electronics and IT has been vocal about this grave issue. The minister took to X(formerly Twitter)  “There will be ZERO tolerance for criminal & harmful content on Indian Internet. IT Rules under the IT Act clearly lays down the expectation from Intermediaries: They cannot host criminal & harmful content like CSAM,” .

Although the igniting point for this issue is still unknown but it is clear that if not acted upon, it will termed a the breach of rule 3 (1)(b) and rule4(4) of the IT Rules 2021. IT Act 2000 acts as the basis for addressing such content.

Spokesperson of Youtube said- “We have a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse material. No form of content that endangers minors is acceptable to us. We have heavily invested in the technology and teams to fight child sexual abuse and exploitation online and take swift to remove it as quickly as possible. In Q2 2023, we removed over 94,000 channels and over 2.5 million videos for violations of our child safety policies. We will continue to work with experts inside and outside of YouTube to provide minors and families with the best protections possible.”

Spokesperson of Telegram said “8,198 groups and channels were banned in the first five days of October. This is interesting because despite the requirement under IT Rules 2021, Telegram does not publish its monthly transparency report and this is thus one of the very few ways in which this platform is slightly transparent.”