Australia demands Apple, Meta, Microsoft share anti-abuse steps, threatens fines

An Australian regulator sent legal letters to Facebook owners Meta Platforms , Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp, urging them to share their policies to weed out child abuse material from their platforms or face fines.

The e-Safety Commissioner, a body protecting internet users, said it used legislation that went into effect in January to force the tech giants to disclose their measures to detect and remove abuse material within 28 days. Otherwise, the companies would each face a fine of A$555,000 ($383,000) per day.

The threat underscores Australia’s no-holds-barred approach to regulating big tech companies since 2021, which so far has included laws forcing them to pay media companies to view their content and laws requiring them to hand over details of anonymous accounts that post defamatory material.

Internet companies around the world are now under pressure to find a way to monitor encrypted messaging and streaming services for child abuse material without infringing on users’ privacy.

“This activity is no longer confined to hidden corners of the dark web, but is pervasive on the mainstream platforms that we and our children use every day,” Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement.

“As more and more companies move to encrypted messaging services and deploy features like live streaming, there are concerns that this horrible material could spread unchecked across these platforms,” ​​she added.

A spokesman for Microsoft, which owns the video-calling service Skype, said the company received the letter and plans to respond within 28 days.

A spokesman for Meta, which also owns messaging service WhatsApp, said the company is still reviewing the letter but is continuing to “work proactively with the eSafety Officer on these important issues.”

Apple, which owns video messaging service FaceTime, messaging service iMessage and photo storage service iCloud, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The eSafety Commissioner cited figures from the US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, which said it had received 29.1 million child abuse reports from internet companies this year, of which only 160 came from Apple and 22 million from Facebook.