Supreme Court orders platforms to block and demonetise child abuse material

The Supreme Court directed online platforms to prevent child abuse material from being hosted or monetised. The ruling balances stronger digital safeguards with children's fundamental right to internet access.

In Short

• Algorithms allegedly promoted indirect links that bypassed child protection laws
• Proposed fines would reflect violation severity, duration, recurrence and company turnover
• Revenue earned from prohibited subscription content must be forfeited and surrendered

The Supreme Court has taken serious note of failures by social media platforms to curb sexually explicit visual content depicting minors. It has directed every online intermediary to ensure that content capable of harming children is not offered, hosted, uploaded, promoted or circulated, directly or indirectly, through a paywall or subscription, news agency Press Trust of India reported.

A Bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said social media intermediaries and platforms had repeatedly failed to comply with directions issued by the court in 2024. It called for a workable framework to make the internet safer for children.

“Every intermediary must ensure that no CSEAM (Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse Material), or any other material having the propensity or likelihood to harm children, is offered, hosted, uploaded, promoted or circulated through such paywall or subscription, either directly or indirectly,” the Bench said.

The court said it had previously flagged how social media algorithms were being used to promote and share indirect links to harmful material to bypass special legal provisions meant to protect children online. It referred to Section 15 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and Section 67B of the Information Technology Act.

According to PTI, the court said on October 15 that there had been no meaningful progress despite more than two years having passed since its judgment. “If anything, the recent news reports instead reveal an even more unsettling reality when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of our children,” it said, adding that it was deeply saddened by the reports placed before it.

Issuing a series of directions, the Bench said the lack of any earnest initiative by regulatory authorities or social media intermediaries over the years had left the court with no choice but to take matters into its own hands.

“We cannot emphasise this enough that there can be no space for non-consensual, sexually exploitative and abusive material on the internet, particularly on platforms that are readily accessible to the most impressionable and vulnerable of our society,” the court said.

The Supreme Court directed the Centre to consider creating a framework to impose exemplary monetary penalties on intermediaries that breach their duties under the Information Technology Act and its rules. It said the penalties should be based on the seriousness, duration and recurrence of the violation, as well as the size and turnover of the intermediary.

The court said that if child sexual exploitation and abuse material or other prohibited content was hosted, uploaded, promoted or circulated, directly or indirectly, through a paywall or subscription that earned revenue for an intermediary, the money earned from such content should be forfeited and surrendered.

The court also said the right to access and use the internet was a fundamental right under Article 21, read with Article 19(1)(a), of the Constitution. “Our children, irrespective of their age, enjoy the same rights, and to deny the same altogether would be as absurd as saying children below a certain age do not have a conscience worth protecting or a freedom of speech worth expressing. The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both,” it said.

The Supreme Court said children did not stop using the internet merely because the law prohibited them from doing so. Instead, they could continue using it without the knowledge of their parents or authorities and move to other platforms and websites that were unregulated and even more unsafe.

It said keeping children away from social media would not reduce incidents such as those mentioned in the news reports placed before it. “Without proper safeguards and earnest efforts by all stakeholders in the detection and removal of CSEAM, such material will continue to circulate and embolden those who seek out the same,” the court said.

The Bench added that any blanket restriction on internet access for children would be an unproven and disproportionate measure.

Among its directions, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to frame guidelines or standard operating procedures for the use of perceptual hash matching and URL listing by all significant social media intermediaries to detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material from their platforms.

It also directed the Centre to create a National Hash & URL List Database solely to detect and remove such material.

“Where an intermediary detects and removes any CSEAM of ‘Unknown Origin’, the same must be preceded by proper verification and due diligence on its part in accordance with the IT Rules,” the court said. It added that the intermediary must promptly report the content to the appropriate authorities under the relevant law and to the designated body managing the database, if the two were not the same.

On September 23, 2024, the Supreme Court had suggested that Parliament consider amending the POCSO Act to replace the term “child pornography” with “child sexual exploitative and abuse material” to more accurately reflect the nature of such offences. It had also held that watching and downloading child pornography were offences under the POCSO Act and the Information Technology law.

The latest directions require intermediaries to prevent harmful content involving children from being distributed or monetised, while asking the Centre to establish penalties, detection systems and a national database without imposing a blanket restriction on children’s internet access.

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