Meta and Google show significant gaps in cyber risk prevention

Australia’s internet regulator announced on Tuesday, 14 July 2026, that major technology companies possess significant gaps in their enforcement protocols to combat child sexual abuse and the expanding cyber risk of sexual extortion. An official transparency report published by the eSafety Commissioner revealed that prominent online platforms are failing to deploy advanced technology capable of identifying automated coercion scripts used by digital extortion offenders.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant stated that the regulatory body had repeatedly provided tech platforms with clear evidence of how criminals colonise their digital services to devastating effect. Grant added that the watchdog had supplied clear guidance to these platforms on how to stem the abuse effectively. The critical findings arrived after the Australian government drafted legislation in June to grant the eSafety regulator official authority to challenge industry leaders who fail to comply with under-16 social media bans.

The publication further heightens an ongoing regulatory dispute regarding child and teenager safety online. The watchdog previously directed technology platforms in 2024 to report every six months on their compliance with the basic online safety expectations rules of the nation. While investigators discovered specific tactics used in multiple sexual extortion scams, tech companies consistently failed to detect them.

Despite these issues, the report noted several key improvements among specific platforms. Google and Snap took crucial preventative steps to foresee known child sexual abuse material, whilst Discord blocked direct links to abusive content. Additionally, Meta deployed new tools to detect grooming behaviours, and Microsoft implemented systems to identify live abuse during video calls.

However, the regulator emphasised that prominent gaps in user reporting tools persist across major applications including WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages. The eSafety report concluded that multiple messaging services still lack clear, accessible methods for regular users to report sexual extortion or child abuse. Furthermore, many of these platforms continue to fail by not providing dedicated reporting categories to handle these specific online harms.