A new transparency report released by eSafety reveals significant gaps in how major online platforms are tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse, in particular the growing issue of sexual extortion which continues to place children and many young adults at ongoing risk.
Apple, Discord, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap and WhatsApp are required to report to eSafety every six months over a two-year period on their compliance with the Basic Online Safety Expectations.
The transparency reporting focuses on how the platforms are tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse material and activity, including grooming, and sexual extortion of children and adults, with summaries of their responses published to improve transparency and drive stronger safety outcomes across the tech industry.
The latest report - the third in a planned series of four - takes a particular focus sexual extortion which is a growing and very damaging form of online abuse which can have serious consequences for victims.
It is a particularly damaging form of online blackmail, where perpetrators share or threaten to share intimate material unless victims comply with demands.
Reports of this abuse continue to rise. Between 1 July and 31 December 2025, eSafety received more than 2,000 complaints about sexual extortion, with young men aged 18 to 24 the most affected.
But a joint eSafety and Australian Institute of Criminology research project published last year which surveyed nearly 2000 young people aged 16-18, also found that more than 1 in 10 adolescents (11.3%) had been the victim of sexual extortion and of those, more than half (57.7%) had experienced it before te age of 16.
eSafety's complaints and investigations branch is also seeing younger teens increasingly being targeted. When sexual extortion involves children, it is also a form of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The release of the report comes as eSafety launched a new online safety awareness campaign last month aimed at informing young men about the dangers and tactics used in sexual extortion scams, what to do if they fall victim to them and where to find help and support.
Responses from the companies show there are serious gaps in the use of available technologies like language analysis that can identify well-known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders.
Gaps in reporting tools also persist across services like WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord and Google Messages, with some services lacking clear, accessible ways for users to report sexual extortion or child abuse or failing to provide dedicated reporting categories for these harms.
The report also highlights the challenges of detecting harm in private messaging and video environments, where both sexual extortion and livestreamed sexual abuse often occur.
Companies should ensure they are putting in place measures to prevent them being misused by bad actors, as well as continuing to innovate new ways of countering these ongoing harms
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said the findings show the scale of the challenge - and the urgency for platforms to act.
"We're deeply concerned about the devastating impacts of sexual extortion, which not only target vulnerable individuals but also have profound psychological and emotional consequences for victims and their families," she said.
"Sexual extortion often targets young men, with criminals tricking victims into sharing intimate images of themselves before demanding money and threatening to expose the images to family, friends or the general public.
"The goal is often quick financial gain, with perpetrators using high-pressure tactics to force victims into paying. This form of extortion can cause high levels of stress, panic, psychological distress and financial loss.
"In several cases, we have provided these platforms with evidence of how their services are being colonised by criminals to devastating impact, with clear guidance on how to stem the abuse. Even when we've laid this out, we haven't seen adequate responses, despite the technology being readily available.
"This report shows that platforms could and should be doing a lot more to prevent these harms and there are simple steps they can take today to protect users.
"My investigators continue to see the same kill chains, scripts and images being used across multiple sexual extortion scams, and platforms should be picking this up. Better reporting pathways and faster response times to victim reports are also vital.
The report also shows that gaps remain in detecting other forms of child sexual abuse material and exploitation, including livestreamed child sexual abuse in video calls, remains an under-addressed threat. Only Microsoft is using tools to detect and disrupt live online child sexual abuse in video calls.
This was one improvement eSafety very much welcomes and we hope others will follow suit. Presently, no other providers are using proactive detection tools to detect this extremely serious form of harm in video calls.
Persistent gaps were also identified in detecting new child sexual abuse material, with several providers still not using tools to identify previously unseen images and videos across all parts of their services.
These remain a consistent weakness highlighted in the reports of the previous two reporting periods.
"Offenders are continuing to exploit gaps in platform design, weak detection systems and inconsistent safeguards to move seamlessly between services and escalate harm against children," Ms Inman Grant said.
"Technology already exists to better detect livestreamed child sexual abuse and newly created child sexual abuse material, but it is not being consistently deployed.
"These are some of the most innovative companies on the planet with some of the best minds, we would like to see some of this innovation going into the development of new technologies to tackle the worst-of-the-worst online content. There are also effective third-party on-device technologies commercially available so it beggars belief that we haven't seen greater adoption of these interventions.
"We are pleased to report some incremental safety improvements following engagement with service providers from previous reports. Safety uplift has been recorded with Google and Snap taking additional steps to proactively detect known CSEA; Meta using new tools to detect grooming, and Discord began blocking URLs to known CSEA.
"A comprehensive, multilayered approach is essential - combining proactive detection tools, strong and accessible reporting systems, and this ongoing innovation to address these issues. This is particularly important because sexual extortion results in the creation of new CSEA - rather than known CSEA - every hour of every day.
If you are the victim of sexual extortion you should immediately stop contact with the blackmailer, collect evidence and report it to the platform on which it occurred - and don't pay. If intimate content is shared online you can also report it to eSafety at www.esafety.gov.au/report as we have removal powers for this content and a 98% success rate in getting it down.
If you are under 18, you can report to the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE). Australians can also contact Kids Helpline and Headspace for support.
