Online abuse crackdown: new tools launched to help big tech and startups to stop harm

There’s a crackdown coming for online threats, abuse, and hate speech and both big and small tech firms are invited.

AN ASSESSMENT tool to help tech firms crack down on hate speech, terrorist content, child abuse images and violent threats on their platforms will be released in Australia today in a bid to set a higher standard for the global tech industry.

Australia eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant revealed plans to launch its Safety by Design tool following 18 months of collaboration with 180 individuals and companies.

And the online tool, which assesses potentially illegal and harmful flaws in small and large tech operations, will arrive after a spike in online abuse and reports of online child exploitation recording during the Covid pandemic.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant will launch a new online assessment tool for tech firms. Stuart McEvoy/The Australian.

Ms Inman Grant, who worked at Microsoft and Twitter before heading the eSafety Commission, said safety was often overlooked or deprioritised even by the largest of technology companies, and the Safety by Design online tools were designed to pinpoint weaknesses in their systems.

The tools would not become mandatory for Australian tech firms, she said, but could be useful for identifying weaknesses in their systems before they were exploited, like flaws discovered in the videoconferencing service Zoom last year.

“There were a group of kindergarteners in Far North Queensland that were having a lesson and were Zoom-bombed with terrorist content,” she said.

“Extremely distressing content that these young eyes can’t unsee and so they had to take it offline, stop all sort of feature development, but how do you calculate that loss and trust?”

The tools, available from the eSafety Commission website, will take seven hours for firms to complete and will include sections for online harms and privacy issues.

Ms Inman Grant said there were separate tools for start-ups and larger tech firms, and she hoped the tools would see widespread, global adoption.

“We needed to find a way to shift the responsibility back on to the platforms themselves, just as product liabilities serve to do around toy and goods manufacturing or food safety standards,” she said.

“You’re not allowed to sell food or serve food at a cafe that makes people sick or poisons them but none of these standards exist in the technology world.”

The tools will be launched days before the Online Safety Bill 2021 is expected to pass the Senate, giving the eSafety Commissioner a host a new powers to remove content and block websites.

Originally published as Online abuse crackdown: new tools launched to help big tech and startups to stop harm