When Algorithms Push Harm, Who's Liable?
7/14/202624 min
When a recommendation system pushes child sexual abuse material to a user, who answers for it: the algorithm or the company behind it? Host Anirban Chowdhury speaks with Supreme Court of India lawyer Sajan Poovayya, who breaks down India's evolving liability framework for platforms, from the strict liability standard around CSAM ( Child Sexual Abuse Material) to the tricky question of proving corporate intent through POCSO, the IT Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. He unpacks the Supreme Court's take on constructive possession, why safe harbor may not apply when engagement-driven design pushes harmful content, and how India's dark pattern penalties could offer a blueprint for regulating platform accountability.
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First 90 secondsAnirban Chaudhuri· Host0:02
[upbeat music] This episode contains references to sexual abuse and exploitation. Listener's discretion is advised. Earlier this month, an investigative report by the BBC exposed how Instagram's recommendation systems were used to push child sexual abuse material or CSAM-related ads to Indian users, escalating from adult content to explicit material within days without the user even searching for it. The findings triggered government scrutiny of Meta and renewed questions about the role of social messaging service Telegram, where the content was being traded. But this isn't just a story about one platform or one investigative report. It's a story about what happens when recommendation algorithms learn and predict faster than the law can respond. It's about whether the dark spaces of social media you're often pushed into happens by accident or laxity or intent. In fact, where does intent sit when a machine, not a person, makes the push? Can an intermediary claim safe harbor for what its own system is designed to amplify? And as harm gets distributed or diffused across ad networks, messaging