New Delhi, July 13 -- The ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) has received Meta's response to its notice over advertisements and content allegedly promoting or facilitating child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) on Instagram and is reviewing the company's submission, a government official familiar with the matter said on Sunday. "We have received Meta's response and are reviewing it," the official said. MeitY had on July 4 directed Meta, on the insistence of Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, to immediately disable all Instagram advertisements and content allegedly promoting or facilitating CSEAM, following a BBC Eye investigation that reported finding around 30 unique advertisements allegedly promoting child sexual abuse material on the platform. The ministry had also given the company seven days to explain how such advertisements were allowed to appear on Instagram. The deadline for Meta's response was July 11. Ahead of submitting its response to Meity, Meta in a blog post on July 7 rejected suggestions that it knowingly targeted users with CSEAM-related advertisements in India. "It is categorically inaccurate to suggest that we'd knowingly and deliberately target ads featuring children to people based on an inappropriate interest in children," the company said. "Quite the opposite; we use technology to identify accounts that have shown potentially suspicious activity related to children and we removed over 4 million of these accounts last year." According to the BBC report, Instagram displayed advertisements containing phrases such as "rape video" and "child video" that directed users to Telegram channels allegedly selling child sexual abuse material. htc...