Europe watches as Australia faults tech giants on abuse tools

Australia’s eSafety regulator has published its third transparency report, concluding that major technology companies are failing to deploy existing tools to detect and prevent child sexual exploitation. The report specifically identifies sexual extortion, a form of blackmail where offenders threaten to publish intimate images, as a critical area of inaction.

The regulator found that platforms are not using basic language analysis to catch offenders, despite the fact that sexual extortion relies on recognisable, repeated coercive scripts. “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,” said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. “Even when we’ve laid this out, we haven’t seen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available.”

The scale of the problem is substantial. The regulator received more than 2,000 complaints about sexual extortion between July and December 2025. Contrary to common assumptions, young men aged 18 to 24 are the most affected demographic, though a previous eSafety study found more than one in 10 people aged 16 to 18 had been targeted, with over half of those cases occurring before the victims turned 16.

Business and Regulatory Implications

The report highlights practical failures across major messaging services. Platforms including WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages either lack a clear mechanism to report sexual extortion or fail to offer a dedicated category for it. Furthermore, while technology to detect livestreamed abuse exists, companies are not consistently applying it.

Not all assessments were negative. Google and Snap have taken steps to proactively detect known abuse material, Discord has started blocking related links, Meta has introduced grooming detection tools, and Microsoft is now detecting live abuse during video calls. Apple, Meta, Google, Snap, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

For European policymakers and investors, the report carries significant weight. Britain and several European countries are actively watching the Australian outcome as their own domestic child-safety rules stall in negotiations. Canberra is currently moving to double the maximum penalties for systemic breaches and empower the regulator to pursue platforms in court over a new under-16 social media ban, a mechanism eSafety has already accused Meta, TikTok, and YouTube of bypassing.

Australia’s aggressive regulatory stance effectively serves as a test case for Europe. If Australian courts successfully force global platforms to absorb the costs of widespread language analysis and livestream detection, European legislators are likely to adopt similar enforcement models. The third report makes clear that the industry's current defence of lacking technological capability no longer holds.