Australian regulator slams YouTube, tech giants for failing to tackle child abuse content
Australia’s internet safety regulator has accused major tech companies, including YouTube and Apple, of ignoring their responsibilities to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online.
In a report released Wednesday, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said YouTube was particularly unresponsive to queries and failed to track how many reports of abuse it received or how quickly it acted on them, News.Az reports, citing Reuters.
“When left to their own devices, these companies aren’t prioritising the protection of children,” Inman Grant said, adding that no other industry would be allowed to operate while enabling such “heinous crimes.”
The criticism follows the government’s recent decision to revoke YouTube’s exemption from a new social media ban targeting teenagers, based on eSafety’s recommendations. The move places the Google-owned platform alongside others such as Meta, Apple, Discord, and Snap, all required to disclose how they handle CSAM on their services.
The report found serious safety gaps across the platforms, including poor detection of livestreamed abuse, failure to block known harmful links, and inadequate use of tools like hash-matching – a technology that compares uploaded images with a database of known abuse content.
A Google spokesperson pushed back, claiming YouTube removes over 99% of abusive content before it’s reported or viewed, and that eSafety's critique was based more on metrics than actual safety outcomes.
Despite previous warnings, the report said many companies have made little to no progress in fixing these issues, heightening the risk of harm to children online.
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