In her first Transparency Report, published nearly a year ago Australia’s e-Safety Commissioner uttered these immortal words

“some of the biggest and richest technology companies …. are turning a blind eye, failing to take appropriate steps to protect the most vulnerable from the most predatory”.

How could she say this? Because the Commissioner has statutory powers to compel Big Tech to provide truthful answers to her questions and an obligation to report publicly on what she found. She had been up close and personal. No conjecture or guesswork here.

Further on the Commissioner added

“The responses overall were ‘alarming’ and raised concerns of ‘clearly inadequate and inconsistent use of widely available technology to detect child abuse material and grooming’ “.

The media attention at the time focused on Apple and Microsoft as the principal culprits but that first report also looked at Meta, WhatsApp, Omegle and Snap.

A few weeks ago the OECD reached almost identical conclusions only it had worked on a broader canvas. Here is a choice quote from them, referring to only the minority of companies it looked at where they had an acknowledged policy of addressing child sexual abuse material.  The majority didn’t or were unclear about it. The OECD said there were

“significant variations in what behaviour is captured …. the metrics, methodology and frequency of transparency reports differ across platforms”.

Not good.

The Commissioner rides again

Yesterday (16th October) the Australian e-Safety Commissioner published her second statutory transparency report. This time the focus was on Google, TikTok, Discord, Twitch, and the app formely known as Twitter, now called X. To dispense with them first, they did not reply to the Commissioner’s questions so they have been fined  610,000 Australian dollars, about £320,000. This will not break Elon Musk’s bank but it is an important marker from which other things might follow.

As for the rest, I commend the entire report from the Commissioner to you and here are the key paragraphs extracted from part of the briefing that accompanies it.

“Our first report featuring Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Skype, Snap, WhatsApp and Omegle uncovered serious shortfalls in how these companies were tackling this issue.

This latest report also reveals similar gaps in how (another) five tech companies are dealing with the problem and how they are tackling the rise in sexual extortion and we need them all to do better.

What we are talking about here are serious crimes playing out on these platforms committed by predatory adults against innocent children and the community expects every tech company to be taking meaningful action.”

Trustworthy, independent transparency can unlock so many other things. Sunshine is always the best of disinfectants. Shareholders, Directors, senior managers and all staff do not want to see their collective shortcomings being publicly aired. Who would?