Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has criticized major social media firms for failing to adequately address child sexual abuse material on their platforms.

In a report released August 6, 2025, the regulator said YouTube and Apple did not track the number of user reports about such content or disclose their response times.

The office also found safety gaps across platforms owned by Meta, Discord, Microsoft, Skype, Snap, and WhatsApp, including failures in detecting livestreams of abuse material and blocking links to known illegal content.

The report found that some companies have not improved their safety measures, despite previous warnings from the regulator.

The report noted that many platforms do not use hash-matching technology across all services to identify illegal images.

YouTube, owned by Alphabet, and Apple did not provide details on the number of staff dedicated to trust and safety.

Google has previously said it uses industry-standard tools to detect and remove abuse material.

Meta says it prohibits graphic videos on its platforms.

🔗 Source: Reuters

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ CSAM detection challenges persist despite available technology

The Australian regulator’s criticism highlights a broader industry pattern where platforms underutilize existing detection tools.

Hash matching technology, which creates digital fingerprints to identify known abuse material, is only used by 89% of major platforms for images and just 59% for videos, according to the Tech Coalition’s 2024 survey1.

This partial adoption means that known abuse material can slip through detection systems, particularly on video platforms where the technology gap is most pronounced.

The technology itself isn’t new. Microsoft’s PhotoDNA has been available for years, but platforms often fail to implement it across all parts of their services1.

Australia’s finding that companies couldn’t answer basic questions about user reports suggests many platforms lack comprehensive monitoring systems, despite having access to industry-standard detection tools.