Key facts
- Australia's internet regulator, eSafety, identified significant gaps in Big Tech's efforts to combat online child sexual abuse and sexual extortion.
- Companies like Apple, Meta, and Google are reportedly failing to deploy readily available technologies, such as language analysis, to detect criminal activity.
- The regulator received over 2,000 complaints related to sexual extortion between July and December 2025, with young men aged 18-24 being the most affected demographic.
- A previous study indicated that more than 10% of teenagers aged 16-18 had experienced sexual extortion, with over half targeted before the age of 16.
- New legislation has been introduced to grant eSafety more authority to take legal action against tech companies for non-compliance with child safety regulations.
SYDNEY, July 14 (Reuters) - Australia's internet regulator, eSafety, has identified "significant gaps" in the efforts of major technology companies, including Apple, Meta, and Google, to combat child sexual abuse and the escalating threat of online sexual extortion. The regulator's transparency report indicates that these platforms are not adequately utilizing available technologies, such as language analysis, to detect the coercion scripts commonly employed by sexual extortion offenders.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant stated that even when provided with evidence of criminal activity on their services and clear guidance on how to mitigate abuse, the responses from these platforms have been insufficient, despite the ready availability of necessary technology. Companies like Google, Meta, Snap, Microsoft, and Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.
This report emerges as the Australian government introduced legislation in June aimed at empowering eSafety with greater legal recourse against tech giants that fail to comply with its ban on social media access for individuals under 16. This move escalates a regulatory dispute over child protection measures online. Australia was the first country to implement such a ban, with other nations, including the UK and several European countries, adopting similar policies.
eSafety has been actively raising concerns about the safety of children on chat and gaming platforms, having previously requested online gaming platforms to detail their child protection measures against grooming by sexual predators. In 2024, the regulator directed eight technology platforms to submit semiannual reports on their adherence to Australia's "Basic Online Safety Expectations" rules, with a specific focus on detecting and preventing child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The latest report, the third in a planned series, primarily addresses sexual extortion, a form of online blackmail involving the sharing or threat of sharing intimate material to compel victims' compliance. Between July and December 2025, eSafety received over 2,000 complaints regarding sexual extortion, with young men aged 18 to 24 being the most affected demographic. A study conducted by eSafety last year revealed that more than one in ten teenagers aged 16-18 had been victims of sexual extortion, with over half experiencing such targeting before the age of 16.
The investigation found that companies consistently failed to detect the same tactics used across multiple sexual extortion scams. The report highlighted serious deficiencies in the use of technologies like language analysis for identifying known coercion scripts. Furthermore, gaps persist in reporting tools across services such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages, with some lacking clear and accessible methods for users to report sexual extortion or child abuse, or failing to provide dedicated reporting categories for these harms. While technology exists to better detect livestreamed child sexual abuse, it is not being consistently deployed. However, the report did acknowledge some improvements, including proactive detection of child abuse material by Google and Snap, Discord blocking abuse content links, Meta employing new grooming detection tools, and Microsoft detecting live abuse in video calls.