Meta is rolling out new parental supervision features for Threads in India, marking part of a broader Asia-Pacific expansion aimed at giving parents greater oversight of teen activity on the platform.
Key Features of the Family Center Integration:
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Time Management: Parents can monitor the time teenagers spend on Threads, establish daily time limits, and block access during specific hours.
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Sleep Mode and Privacy: Guardians can adjust Sleep Mode settings, control who is permitted to tag their child, and manage specific privacy and sensitive-content filters.
Wider Regulatory and Compliance Backdrop:
The rollout coincides with intensive discussions between the Indian government and Meta regarding content moderation, recommendation algorithms, deepfakes, and intermediary liability.
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Law Enforcement Collaboration: Following government pressure, Meta has agreed to report child-safety infractions directly to local cybercrime authorities via the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C).
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Shifting Legal Framework: The push aligns with strict requirements under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework—which mandates verifiable parental consent and restricts behavioral profiling for minors—as well as existing obligations under the POCSO Act.
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Government Stance: While officials acknowledge product-level changes like safety-by-design and parental controls, the government maintains that these tools do not replace the fundamental requirement to actively detect, prevent, and remove unlawful material and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from algorithmic recommendation feeds.
