Tech platforms made to front up on their child sexual abuse measures

Tech giants Meta, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will be forced to report on their efforts to tackle online child sexual abuse on their platforms to the eSafety Commissioner every six months under a new direction from the regulator.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Tech giants Meta, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will be forced to report on their efforts to tackle online child sexual abuse on their platforms to the eSafety Commissioner every six months under a new direction from the regulator.

The eSafety Commissioner said earlier, one-off reports exposed “a range of safety concerns” in relation to protecting children from abuse.

“We’re stepping up the pressure on these companies to lift their game,” Julie Inman Grant said. “They’ll be required to report to me every six months and show they are making improvements.

“When we sent notices to these companies back in 2022-23, some of their answers were alarming but not surprising as we had suspected for a long time that there were significant gaps and differences across services’ practices.

“In our subsequent conversations with these companies, we still haven’t seen meaningful changes or improvements.

“Apple and Microsoft said in 2022 that they do not attempt to proactively detect child abuse material stored in their widely used iCloud and OneDrive services. This is despite the fact it is well-known these file-storing services serve as a haven for child sexual abuse and pro-terror content to persist and thrive in the dark.

“We also learnt that Skype, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime and Discord did not use any technology to detect live-streaming of child sexual abuse in video chats. This is despite evidence of the extensive use of Skype, in particular, for this longstanding and proliferating crime. Meta also admitted it did not always share information between its services when an account is banned for child abuse, meaning offenders banned on Facebook may be able to continue perpetrating abuse through their Instagram accounts, and offenders banned on WhatsApp may not be banned on either Facebook or Instagram.”

Failure to comply could result in a fine of up to $782,500 a day. Ms Inman Grant said she would publish regular summaries of the submitted reports. A notable omission from the list of platforms is Elon Musk’s X. Ms Inman Grant recently withdrew a Federal Court bid to enforce her take-down order of footage of the Wakeley church stabbing on X. This omission, she said, was because of ongoing litigation because X did not comply with a previous“transparency notice”.

Ms Inman Grant said that given draft notices served to tech platforms and similar regimes overseas, she did not anticipate much resistance. “But we’re not the only country now dealing with transparency reports,” she said.

“This is a reality they’re going to have to contend with. The UK will start rolling out their transparency reports. The EU is.”

She said the periodic reports would provide more information to determine what kind of additional legislative powers may be required to rein in the platforms.

“We’re entering a new, much more technical era of regulation,” she said.

“This is just the beginning.”