Tech giants will have to report their progress in tackling child abuse on their platforms. Photo: Shutterstock
Warning: This story contains references to child abuse.
Some of the world’s biggest tech companies will face fines of nearly $800,000 a day if they fail to provide the Australian government with twice-yearly reports on their efforts to tackle child abuse material on their platforms.
The eSafety Commissioner on Wednesday issued further legal notices to tech firms including Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft under the Internet Safety Act, ordering them to report every six months on the measures they have in place to tackle this matter.
These notifications have also been released for Discord, Snap, Skype and WhatsApp.
These reports will have to include information on how these tech companies are handling child abuse material posted on their platforms, live-streamed abuse, online grooming, sexual extortion and the production of AI-generated abuse material.
Companies that fail to provide these reports to the government on time will face a fine of $782,500 for each day they are late, with the Safety Commissioner threatening to go to court to enforce these financial penalties.
“We’re increasing the pressure on these companies to lift their game,” said Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.
“They will be required to report to us every six months and show us that they are making improvements.”
The eSafety Commissioner issued similar notices to the same tech companies early last year and said the responses he received were very concerning and led to stepped-up enforcement action.
“In our subsequent conversations with these companies, we have yet to see significant changes or improvements to these identified security deficiencies,” Inman Grant said.
‘willful blindness’
Among the troubling responses to previous legal notices were Apple and Microsoft saying in 2022 that they were not proactively disclosing child abuse material stored on their cloud storage services, despite it being “well known” that they “serve as a haven for child sexual abuse,” Inman Grant said.
It also found that Microsoft took an average of two days to respond to user reports of child sexual exploitation and abuse on its platforms, and sometimes up to 19 days if the reports required a review.
Meta also previously said it had made 27 million reports of child sexual abuse to authorities, while Apple said it had made only 267.
“The reason is they’re getting an element of willful blindness,” Inman Grant told ABC RN Breakfast.
“They’re not revealing it, they’re not looking under the hood to see what might be hosted on their platforms, and they’re not allowing people to report this content when they come across it.”
The eSafety Commission will publish summaries of the reports provided by these technology firms.
The new reporting requirements have been welcomed by the International Justice Mission, an international non-governmental organization that focuses on human rights and law enforcement.
“To date, these companies have failed to provide a safe online environment for children,” said International Justice Mission Australia country director David Braga.
“We hope that transparency will prompt major technology companies to review not only the distribution of content on their platforms, but also the systems that allow this distribution of content.”
Reporting with teeth
Tech firms now have until February 15 next year to provide these reports to the eSafety Commission, and compliance is mandatory, with a fine of nearly $800,000 applicable.
“These transparency powers will work with our related mandatory codes and standards,” Inman Grant said.
“For those who don’t follow the law or pay their infringement notices like X Corp in this area, we will go to court.”
The eSafety Commission issued the first fine under the scheme to X late last year after the social media giant failed to respond to earlier inquiries about child abuse material on its platform.
X has refused to pay the fine of more than $600,000 and is now embroiled in a legal battle with the eSafety Commission over it.
Similar legal notices were also issued to various tech firms earlier this year, seeking information on the efforts they are undertaking to address terrorist content being spread on their platforms.
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