Social Media tackling Sexual extortion!
Bangkok, July 14 (EFE).-
Australia’s online safety regulator on Tuesday flagged significant gaps in how major social media platforms are tackling sexual extortion of children and young people.
In its third transparency report, eSafety said it received over 2,000 complaints about sexual extortion, with young men aged 18 to 24 being the most affected group, between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2025.
The report, which coincides with the start of a campaign to raise awareness about safety on digital platforms, said that the regulator’s complaints and investigations branch is also seeing younger teens increasingly being targeted.
“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,” eSafety cCommissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement.
The Oceania country, which enforces strict regulations on social media—including, among other measures, a ban since December on children under 16 accessing these platforms—has also taken action in recent months against AI platforms, including Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, for generating fake sexual images of real women.
The Australian agency said that messaging services such as WhatsApp, iMessage, Discord, and Google Messages are “lacking clear, accessible ways for users to report sexual extortion or child abuse or failing to provide dedicated reporting categories for these harms.”
The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024, in effect since Dec. 10, made Australia the first country in the world to legally ban children under 16 from holding accounts on major social media networks.
The law requires platforms to verify the age of their users and prohibit access to children under 16, or face fines of up to AU$49.5 million ($34 million).
At the end of June, Canberra announced legislative reform to increase the maximum fine to AU$99 million ($68 million) and grant greater powers to eSafety to take action against social media companies. EFE
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