Tech giants must show action on child abuse

Big technology giants amongst organizations called to urgently report. And failure to answer could lead to heavy daily penalties

Global tech giants including Apple and also Facebook have been demanded to show Australian powers what they are truly doing to halt child abuse on their platforms or risk daily fines.

Australia has ordered global technology giants to show what steps they are taking to battle child abuse on their networks or face large fines, the government reported on Tuesday.

eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has delivered notices to Apple; Meta, which is the parent company of WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram; Microsoft, and its Skype platform; Snap; and Omegle.

The action is under the Online Safety Act 2021 and calls for the companies to disclose on how they are handling the proliferation of child sexual exploitation content.

In the case that they don’t answer within the timeframe, the companies could very well face penalties of AU$555,000 each day, according to a statement from the commission. This is the very first such demand under the new legislation that was introduced last year.

Additional information and details are available at: esafety.gov.au/industry/basic-online-safety-expectations.

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About Author

Teacher, programmer, AI advocate, fan of One Piece and pretends to know how to cook. Michael graduated Computer Science and in the years 2019 and 2020 he was involved in several projects coordinated by the municipal education department, where the focus was to introduce students from the public network to the world of programming and robotics. Today he is a writer at Wicked Sciences, but says that his heart will always belong to Python.