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Tech companies ordered to report on how they address child sexual exploitation material
World-first legal orders by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner have required some of the world’s largest tech companies to report on what they are doing to prevent the circulation of child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSAM).
Jess Feyder
The legal orders aim to reveal what online companies are doing (or, are not doing) to protect their users from harm caused by online child exploitation and abuse.
Since 2015, eSafety has handled more than 61,000 complaints about illegal and restricted content — the majority of these involving CSAM.
Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman-Grant has said that eSafety has seen a surge in reports about CSAM since the start of the pandemic “as technology was weaponised to abuse children”.
Ms Inman-Grant said that the harm experienced by victim-survivors is perpetuated when platforms and services fail to detect and remove the content.
On 23 January 2022, the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) came into effect, the objectives of which are to improve and promote online safety for Australians.
The act gives eSafety improved powers to help protect all Australians from the most serious forms of online harm.
Under the new Basic Online Safety Expectations (the Expectations) — a key part of the act — eSafety can issue legal notices to providers of social media services, messaging services, gaming services, file-sharing services, and certain apps and sites, requiring them to report on how they are meeting any or all of the Expectations.
eSafety can also publish statements about the extent to which services are meeting the Expectations.
On 29 August 2022, in an initial information-gathering exercise, eSafety issued notices to a number of the world’s largest tech companies as part of the implementation of the Expectations — requiring them to report on the measures they are taking (or not taking) to address the creation and spread of CSAM on their platforms and services.
eSafety decided on this first batch of tech companies based on considerations like the number of complaints to eSafety, the company’s reach, and how much information is already public.
Under the act, companies who fail to comply and respond to a notice within 28 days risk facing civil penalties of up to $555,000 a day.
eSafety plans to issue further notices to additional relevant providers in due course to build a comprehensive picture of online safety measures across a wide range of services.
