{"id":210126,"date":"2026-02-04T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T19:20:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T00:20:13","slug":"big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/04\/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Big tech companies are still failing to tackle child abuse material online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Big tech companies are still failing to tackle child abuse material online<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/theconversation.com\/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-02-04 18:31:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n

In the 2024\u201325 financial year alone, the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation received nearly 83,000 reports of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM), primarily on mainstream platforms. This was a 41% increase from the year before.<\/p>\n

It is in this context of child abuse occurring in plain sight, on mainstream platforms, that the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, requires transparency notices every six months from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and other big tech firms. <\/p>\n

The latest report, published today, shows some progress in detecting known abuse material \u2013 including material that is generated by artificial intelligence (AI), live-streamed abuse, online grooming, and sexual extortion of children and adults \u2013 and reducing moderation times. <\/p>\n

However, the report also reveals ongoing and serious safety gaps that still put users, especially children, at risk. It makes clear that transparency is not enough. Consistent with existing calls for a legally mandated Digital Duty of Care, we need to move from merely recording harms to preventing them through better design.<\/p>\n

What the reports tell us<\/h2>\n

These transparency reports are important for companies to meet regulatory requirements. <\/p>\n

But the new eSafety \u201csnapshot\u201d shows an ongoing gap between what technology can do and what companies are actually doing to tackle online harms. <\/p>\n

One of the positive findings is that Snap, which owns SnapChat, has reduced its child sexual exploitation and abuse moderation response time from 90 minutes to 11 minutes. <\/p>\n

Microsoft has also expanded its detection of known abuse material within Outlook. <\/p>\n

However, Meta and Google continue to leave video calling services such as Messenger and Google Meet unmonitored for live-streamed abuse. This is despite them using detection tools on their other platforms. <\/p>\n

The eSafety report highlights that Apple and Discord are failing to implement proactive detection, with Apple relying almost entirely on user…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Big tech companies are still failing to tackle child abuse material online https:\/\/theconversation.com\/big-tech-companies-are-still-failing-to-tackle-child-abuse-material-online-274857 Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":210127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.theconversation.com\/files\/716432\/original\/file-20260204-56-c47ecr.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&rect=0%2C304%2C3648%2C1824&q=45&auto=format&w=1356&h=668&fit=crop","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-210126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210126"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210128,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210126\/revisions\/210128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}