The Australian eSafety Commissioner has put the biggest tech stocks on notice, issuing legal notices requiring companies like Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Meta and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) to report their efforts to tackle online child abuse every six months.
Notices were also sent to Discord, Snap, Skype and WhatsApp under the Online Safety Act, requiring all recipients to explain how they are tackling child abuse material, live-streamed abuse, online grooming, sexual extortion and where applicable the production of 'synthetic' or deepfaked child abuse material created using generative AI.
Tech companies will be required to report twice a year for the next two years, with the eSafety Commission publishing summaries of the findings.
Major tech companies must take action
According to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the companies were selected partially based on answers they had given the commission in the past, which highlighted a range of safety concerns.
“We’re stepping up the pressure on these companies to lift their game,” Inman Grant said, “They’ll be required to report to us every six months and show us they are making improvements.
“When we sent notices to these companies back in 2022/3, some of their answers were alarming but not surprising as we had suspected for a long time that there were significant gaps and differences across services’ practices.
“In our subsequent conversations with these companies, we still haven’t seen meaningful changes or improvements to these identified safety shortcomings.”
No proactive technological safeguards
“Apple and Microsoft said in 2022 that they do not attempt to proactively detect child abuse material stored in their widely used iCloud and OneDrive services,” Inman Grant explained.
“This is despite the fact it is well-known that these file-storing services serve as a haven for child sexual abuse and pro-terror content to persist and thrive in the dark.
“We also learnt that Skype, Microsoft Teams, FaceTime and Discord did not use any technology to detect live-streaming of child sexual abuse in video chats.
“This is despite evidence of the extensive use of Skype, in particular, for this long-standing and proliferating crime.
“Meta also admitted it did not always share information between its services when an account is banned for child abuse, meaning offenders banned on Facebook (NASDAQ:META) may be able to continue perpetrating abuse through their Instagram accounts, and offenders banned on WhatsApp may not be banned on either Facebook or Instagram."
Google and Snapchat were no better in terms of active deterrents; neither Google or its subsidiary Youtube block links to websites known to contain abusive material, despite the widely available and commonly used databases detailing these websites.
Snapchat has no tools to detect this kind of criminal activity in its chats either, even though eSafety investigators have regularly observed the behaviour on the platform.
“These notices will let us know if these companies have made any improvements in online safety since 2022/3 and make sure these companies remain accountable for harm still being perpetrated against children on their services,” Inman Grant said.
“We know that some of these companies have been making improvements in some areas – this is the opportunity to show us progress across the board.”