Major online platforms aren’t doing enough to protect children from sexual extortion, according to a report by the eSafety Commissioner.
The commissioner received more than 2,000 complaints between July and December 2025 about sexual extortion, with young men aged 18 to 24 the most affected, and Instagram and WhatsApp the services most named.
The report found many tech platforms had declined to address serious gaps in the use of available technologies such as language analysis, that can be used to identify well-known coercion scripts used by sexual extortion offenders.
“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,” said Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner.
“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.
The report found that gaps remain in detecting other forms of child sexual abuse material and exploitation, including live streamed child sexual abuse in video calls, remains an under-addressed threat.
Only Microsoft was identified as using tools to detect and disrupt live online child sexual abuse in video call, with the report finding no other providers are using proactive detection tools to detect this extremely serious form of harm in video calls.
According to the report, Google's sextortion controls are lacking, given the company does not use language analysis technology, to detect sexual extortion of children or adults on Google Meet, Google Chat or Google Messages.
Instead, Google only uses language analysis technology to detect sexual extortion on YouTube.
Apple did not use language analysis technology to detect sexual extortion of children or adults on iMessage, nor did it employ other proactive detection tools for sexual extortion on its service.
Instead, it relied on its communication safety feature, switched on by default for users under the age of 18, which detected nudity in images and videos on iMessages and FaceTime video messages and blurred the image.
After receiving a warning of potential nudity, users could report the content to a trusted adult, or in iMessage, directly to Apple.
Similar functionality was available through the sensitive content warning feature on iMessage and FaceTime, which was designed for adult users.
Discord did not use language analysis technology to detect sexual extortion of children or adults at all, having discontinued its trial of language analysis tools after the first reporting period, stating that the trialled tool did not yield sufficiently accurate signals.
While Discord told the eSafety commission that it continues to explore options, it did not commit to, or provide specific details on how it would work to improve, refine, or reintroduce this technology to proactively detect and deter sexual extortion.
Meta was found to use language analysis tools to detect sexual extortion on all material by default on Instagram, Facebook and Threads.
However, these tools were more limited on Facebook Messenger, which was end-to-end encrypted, and on Instagram Direct, which enabled end-users to switch on end-to-end encryption if they wished.
Across both these services, language analysis tools were only used on public messaging (channels and community chats) and on material reported by users.
Yet, these features were not on by default for all users, they are only for children under 18 who had accurately declared their age, or whose parents or carers had set up the device with an accurate age for their child.
“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,” 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.”
Top with highest number of sexual extortion reports to eSafety
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