Meta's $17B US settlement exposes India's child-safety gaps

Meta's $17-billion US settlement over allegations of social media addiction among teenagers has put the spotlight on India's relatively weaker safeguards against addictive platform design and algorithmic recommendations targeting children, experts said on Thursday.

The settlement commits Meta to sweeping child-safety measures on Facebook and Instagram in the US. Experts said India should seek similar protections for children.

"Any foreign intermediary company has to follow the law of the land and there are enough mechanisms to protect our children," government sources said.

Apar Gupta, founder director of the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), said India's safeguards have significant gaps, particularly around the design of social media platforms and recommendation systems. India's IT Rules primarily regulate illegal content and intermediary due diligence. They do not impose a meaningful safety-by-design obligation on recommendation systems, he said.

Consumer law and the 2023 Dark Patterns Guidelines may reach deceptive interface design, Gupta told businessline. Neither has yet developed into effective protection against addictive social-media architecture, he said.

"India is not entirely without law and Section 9 of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act prohibits processing likely to harm a child's well being, as well as behavioural monitoring directed at children," Gupta said. Section 9 does not come into force until May 13, 2027, because the government gave it an 18-month implementation period, he said.

Gupta said the answer to weak parental controls cannot simply be to "ban children" or demand Aadhaar and facial scans from every user. "Child safety regulation itself can become a serious privacy problem. The Meta settlement offers more useful regulatory ideas such as hiding like counts and an option for a non-personalised feed. These interventions will limit the engagement of the product rather than placing the entire burden on parents," he said.

India lacks the legislation at present, Gupta said, and the absence of a regulatory agency under the DPDP Act makes it unlikely India can require platforms to conduct child-risk assessments of recommender systems. Children's rights include privacy, expression, association and access to information, he said. UNICEF cautions that age restrictions must be evidence-based rather than treated as a complete solution, he added.

Mishi Choudhary, technology lawyer and founder of the Software Freedom Law Center India (SFLC), said the question for India is whether children are exposed to the same product design and whether Meta applies the same safeguards here. "India already prohibits behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children under the DPDP framework. India must closely scrutinise product design choices such as addictive engagement features, recommendation systems and defaults in Meta's products," she said.

India already has IT Rules, data protection obligations concerning children, platform grievance requirements and laws governing unlawful content, Choudhary said. Further regulation, if needed, should target demonstrable harms such as manipulative design and require transparency and independent assessment. It should avoid creating universal age verification or surveillance systems for everyone using the Internet, she said.

"The US cases tell us that regulators should also examine how the products themselves are designed and what platforms know about their effects on children. Indian government has concentrated enormous attention on takedowns, content moderation and intermediary liability, but not on what we actually need for our kids," she added.

NS Nappinai, senior advocate at the Supreme Court and founder of Cyber Saathi, said Meta is equally liable for such or similar violations, if any in India. She called any assumption of a gap in the law fallacious. "The very basis of safe harbour is the absence of knowledge of an intermediary and where Meta may be shown to have consciously developed, deployed or misused algorithms such exemptions will not protect them. They will be well advised to shape up. Meanwhile State governments have been speaking of age gating for social media for underage children," she said.

The Centre, under whose jurisdiction cyber falls, must act immediately and ensure protective and punitive measures are implemented to better protect children online, Nappinai added.