Australia accuses YouTube, Apple of ignoring online child abuse

Australia's internet safety regulator has criticised YouTube and Apple for failing to track or respond adequately to reports of child sexual abuse material on their platforms.

The eSafety Commissioner’s report, released on Wednesday, found serious safety deficiencies across major online platforms, including YouTube and Apple. The platforms were said to lack basic systems to monitor user reports of child abuse content and had not provided information on how quickly such reports were addressed.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said that “when left to their own devices, these companies aren’t prioritising the protection of children and are seemingly turning a blind eye to crimes occurring on their services”.

She added, “No other consumer-facing industry would be given the licence to operate by enabling such heinous crimes against children on their premises, or services.”

The report revealed that neither YouTube nor Apple could say how many user complaints they had received about child sexual abuse material, nor how many trust and safety staff they employed.

Following eSafety’s advice, the Australian government decided last week to include YouTube in its upcoming social media ban for teenagers, reversing its earlier decision to exempt the platform.

While Google has said that it uses artificial intelligence and hash-matching technology to identify and remove abuse material, the eSafety report found that many platforms are not applying these tools comprehensively across all services. Hash-matching is an established method of detecting known child abuse content by comparing image fingerprints to a central database.

Other platforms, including Meta, Discord, Microsoft, Skype, Snap and WhatsApp, were also required to disclose their safety protocols. The report found that most had significant gaps, such as a failure to block links to known child abuse material or prevent livestreaming of exploitation.

“In the case of Apple services and Google’s YouTube, they didn’t even answer our questions,” Inman Grant said, referring to basic inquiries about user reporting volumes and staffing for safety teams.

Google has previously stated that abusive material has “no place” on its platforms and highlighted its use of industry-standard detection tools. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said it bans graphic videos and aims to swiftly remove harmful content.

The eSafety Commissioner, which was established to hold tech companies accountable for user safety, said some platforms had failed to improve despite repeated warnings in previous years.

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