‘Wilful blindness’: Big fines for tech giants that ignore abuse material

Tech giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Meta face fines of almost $800,000 a day if they don’t come clean on their progress in combating child exploitation and sex abuse material on their platforms.

The companies have been given six months to report back to Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, on efforts to lift their standards as part of a tough new approach requiring half-yearly disclosures for the next two years.

Major tech companies face fines of almost $800,000 a day if they don’t front up over efforts to combat online abuse.Credit: Bethany Rae

Inman Grant said the ultimatums were given after the companies admitted alarming failures in addressing harmful content on their social media sites, devices and cloud storage software. She cited one example of Microsoft taking up to 19 days to respond to reports of child abuse.

“It’s a form of wilful blindness,” she said.

“These are the largest, most wealthy, powerful, technology-focused companies in the world. They’re not only not doing everything they can – they’ve shown there is a way, there’s just no will there.”

Google’s director of public policy, Lucinda Longcroft, said the company had developed a range of technologies to proactively detect, remove and report child sexual abuse material and contributed to international databases to combat abusive content.

“We remain committed to these efforts and working constructively and in good faith with the government and industry on the shared goal of keeping Australians safer online,” she said.

Comment has also been sought from Apple, Microsoft, which owns Skype, and Meta, which owns WhatsApp along with Facebook and Instagram.

Inman Grant said: “What’s noteworthy is before we had the powers under the Online Safety Act of 2021, we were asking companies like Apple, ‘Why has Meta reported 27 million cases of child sexual abuse ... but you’ve only reported 267?’ If you’ve got billions of handsets and iPads out in the world … iMessage, iCloud and other platforms including FaceTime, that just doesn’t add up.”

Tech companies are already required to report to the government on steps they are taking to minimise harmful content on their sites and platforms, but Inman Grant said the watchdog intensified its approach after finding the organisations were dragging their feet.

Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says tech giants are wilfully blind to harmful content on their platforms.Credit: Martin Ollman

“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 long-standing and proliferating crime,” she said.

The watchdog had sent the companies “targeted, surgical questions” and required them to answer in a specific way, “which is basically our way of saying, ‘don’t try and put a spin on it’.”

The companies have until February 15 to provide their first round of responses and face fines of $782,500 for each day they don’t comply.

The federal government is also shaping up against tech companies over the online proliferation of images of violent incidents such as the Wakeley church stabbing, which social media company X Corp refused to completely remove over freedom of speech concerns.

Inman Grant on Tuesday told a Senate committee scrutinising government reforms to criminalise the sharing of deepfake sexualised material that the onus should be on artificial intelligence companies to do more to prevent their technology from being used to generate the content, and apps that “nudify” people should be treated in the same way as tracking apps used for coercive control.

In its submission to the parliamentary inquiry, Google said that in its search engine, it demoted websites reported to have a high proportion of non-consensual explicit imagery.

Coalition senator Paul Scarr asked why they were not scrapped altogether.

“Destroy seems a more appropriate verb,” he said.

Labor and the Coalition have also backed a push to apply age limits to the use of social media, while a government review into online safety legislation is being undertaken.

In response to the review, Inman Grant has backed similar powers to those of overseas regulators that can fine a company 10 per cent of its revenue if it does not comply with exploitation safeguards.

“I think it’s important that there’s parity. If the European Commission is asking for something and we’re asking for something, if we’ve got a much smaller quantum of fines and [companies] have to make a determination about who they’re going to respond to and how diligently they’re going to respond to it, they will, of course, pay more attention to the regulators with heftier sticks,” she said.

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