Australia’s online safety regulator blasted major technology companies including Meta Platforms Inc, Apple Inc and Google for failing to stamp out child sexual exploitation and abuse on their services, even after repeated calls to address shortfalls.
Key failings include inadequate detection of live abuse during video calls and insufficient efforts to find newly-created material, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner said Thursday. The regulator criticized a lack of language analysis tools to pick up sexual extortion of Australian kids, even after companies were provided with common online indicators.
“It beggars belief that these have not yet been deployed,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement. “We have been engaging with these companies for a long time on these issues. It’s disappointing to see so little progress being made.”
Apple, Meta, Microsoft and Google didn’t respond to requests for comments. Snap Inc, the owner of Snapchat, said it will continue to work with eSafety on “this critically important issue.” The company welcomed eSafety’s recognition of faster response times to concerning content, but didn’t address specific allegations of inadequate steps to stamp out sexual abuse.
Global watchdogs are increasingly holding the world’s largest tech companies responsible for abuse on their platforms. Inman Grant said it was a matter “corporate conscience and accountability.” Australia late last year also enacted a world-first social media ban for under-16s.