Australia says major tech platforms still lag on child sexual abuse detection

Australia’s online safety regulator has flagged persistent failures by leading technology firms to curb child sexual abuse and a rising wave of sexual extortion targeting young users. The eSafety Commissioner released a transparency report on Tuesday outlining what it called significant gaps in how companies including Apple, Meta and Google respond to these threats.

The report found that major platforms are not making full use of technology already available to them that can flag known coercion patterns used by offenders who blackmail victims with intimate images. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the regulator had repeatedly shown companies evidence of how criminals exploit their platforms and had offered clear direction on how to address the problem. She said the responses so far have not matched the scale of the issue, even though the necessary tools already exist.

Representatives for Google, Meta, Snap, Microsoft and Apple did not immediately answer requests for comment on the findings.

The report follows new legislation introduced by the Australian government in June that would grant eSafety expanded authority to take tech companies to court over noncompliance with the country’s ban on social media use by anyone under 16. The move deepens an ongoing standoff between regulators and major platforms over how best to shield minors online. Australia became the first nation to enact such a ban, and other governments, including the United Kingdom and several countries in Europe, have since moved toward similar restrictions.

Concerns have also extended beyond social media into gaming and chat platforms. In April, eSafety pressed several gaming services to explain what safeguards they have in place to prevent predators from grooming children through those platforms.

Focus on sexual extortion

In 2024, eSafety ordered eight major technology companies to submit reports every six months detailing their compliance with Australia’s Basic Online Safety Expectations, a framework aimed at improving detection and prevention of child sexual exploitation. Tuesday’s release marks the third report in a planned series of four. The first established a baseline for measuring company performance, and the second raised concerns that platforms were not doing enough to proactively identify abusive content.

This latest report centers on sexual extortion, a practice in which offenders threaten to release intimate images or videos of victims unless demands, often financial, are met. According to the regulator, more than 2,000 complaints related to sexual extortion arrived between July and December last year, with men between 18 and 24 years old representing the group most frequently targeted. A separate eSafety study conducted last year found that more than one in ten teenagers between 16 and 18 had experienced sexual extortion, and more than half of those victims first faced it before turning 16.

Investigators at eSafety identified recurring tactics across numerous extortion cases, yet found that platforms consistently failed to catch them. The report stated that company responses reveal serious shortcomings in applying tools such as language analysis, which can recognize scripts commonly used by extortion offenders once they are known. It also pointed to weak reporting systems on services including WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord and Google Messages, noting that several platforms lack straightforward ways for users to report extortion or abuse, and some have no dedicated category for reporting these specific harms.

The report further noted that technology capable of detecting livestreamed child sexual abuse already exists but is not applied consistently across services.

Despite the criticism, the regulator acknowledged some progress. Google and Snap have taken steps toward proactively identifying known child sexual abuse material, according to the findings. Discord has moved to block links leading to abusive content, while Meta has adopted new tools designed to catch grooming behavior. Microsoft, meanwhile, has introduced measures to detect live abuse occurring during video calls.

The findings add to mounting global pressure on technology companies to strengthen protections for young users as governments increasingly treat online child safety as a matter requiring direct regulatory intervention rather than voluntary industry action. Australia’s approach, combining mandatory reporting with the threat of legal consequences, has positioned the country as an early testing ground for how far regulators can push platforms toward stronger safeguards. As more nations consider comparable rules, the outcome of Australia’s ongoing enforcement efforts is likely to shape how other regulators calibrate their own strategies for holding major technology firms accountable for user safety, particularly where children and teenagers are concerned.