E-Safety Commissioner says social giants ‘turning a blind eye' to child sexual abuse and exploitation
Types of abuse include grooming and sexual extortion, and the proliferation of images and material.
None of the social media giants surveyed used tools to detect child sexual exploitation, the e-safety report found.
The first biannual report uses findings submitted by the tech giants themselves, and covers eight platforms including Apple, Discord, Google (the parent company of YouTube), Meta (which houses Facebook and Instagram), Microsoft, Skype, Snap and WhatsApp.
Apple, Discord, Google and Microsoft were singled out for not using hash matching, a kind of file comparison tool to detect the spread of harmful content on known abusive material, which has already been detected by child abuse hotlines and law enforcement.
The report also attacked Apple services and YouTube for not tracking the number of reports they received on child sexual abuse, or how long they took to respond to the complaints.
Both platforms also failed to disclose the number of trust and safety staff hired by the platform, according to the report.
It also found that despite warnings from the eSafety office dating back to 2022 and 2023, only Meta used tools to detect grooming, while only Meta and WhatsApp had tools to identify sexual extortion.
Ms Inman-Grant said that 'when left to their own devices' social media companies weren't 'prioritising the protection of children and are seemingly turning a blind eye to crimes occurring on their services'.
She also urged the eight companies to make 'meaningful progress' to protect children.
'We need to keep the pressure on the tech industry as a whole to live up to their responsibility to protect society's most vulnerable members from the most egregious forms of harm and that's what these periodic notices are designed to encourage,' she said.
'No other consumer-facing industry would be given the licence to operate by enabling such heinous crimes against children on their premises, or services.'
This comes after Communications Minister Annika Wells confirmed YouTube would be included in the under-16s social media ban, with the video streaming giant already threatening the federal government with a High Court challenge.
However children and teens under 16 will still be able to access the platform in a logged out state or through an adult's account. Jessica Wang NewsWire Federal Politics Reporter
Jessica Wang is a federal politics reporter for NewsWire based in the Canberra Press Gallery. She previously covered NSW state politics for the Wire and has also worked at news.com.au, and Mamamia covering breaking news, entertainment, and lifestyle. NewsWire
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