The internet regulator for Australia, eSafety, has released a transparency report revealing that big tech companies are failing to effectively tackle online child abuse, including sexual extortion.
According to the report, Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said, 'In several cases, we have provided these platforms with evidence of how their services are being colonised by criminals to devastating impact, with clear guidance on how to stem the abuse.' But, she added, 'Even when we've laid this out, we haven't seen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available.'
The latest report focuses on sexual extortion, a form of online blackmail where perpetrators share or threaten to share intimate material unless their victims comply with their demands. The regulator said it had received more than 2,000 complaints about sexual extortion between July and December 2025, with young men aged 18 to 24 most affected.
An eSafety study last year found more than one in ten teenagers aged 16-18 had been victims of sexual extortion, with more than half of them being targeted before they were 16. eSafety investigators found the same tactics were used in multiple sexual extortion scams but companies failed to detect them.
The report also noted that responses from the companies showed there are serious gaps in the use of available technologies, like language analysis, that can identify well-known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders. Gaps in reporting tools persist across services like WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages.
Some improvements were noted, including Google and Snap taking steps to proactively detect known child sexual abuse material, Discord blocking links to abuse content, Meta using new tools to detect grooming, and Microsoft detecting live abuse in video calls.
The Australian government has introduced legislation in June to give eSafety more power to pursue tech giants in court for failing to comply with its ban on social media for under-16s. Australia was the first country to impose such a ban, and other countries like Britain and European nations are following suit.
Australia has also raised concerns about the safety of children when they use chat and gaming platforms. In April, eSafety asked some online gaming platforms to detail how they protect children from grooming by sexual predators.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's team has directed eight technology platforms to report every six months on their compliance with Australia's 'Basic Online Safety Expectations' rules, focusing on detecting and preventing child sexual exploitation and abuse.