13 Aug Are tech companies doing enough to keep children safe on video calls?
Children use video calls to chat with friends, family, classmates and gaming communities every day. But a new eSafety report has raised a troubling question: are the platforms themselves doing enough to detect and stop child sexual abuse happening live?
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has found continuing gaps in the way some of the world’s biggest video-calling services detect and prevent the livestreaming of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Its latest transparency report examined safety measures used by services including FaceTime, Discord, Google Meet, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Microsoft.
The findings suggest that while technology capable of detecting abuse during live video calls exists, it is not being widely used.
What did eSafety find?
The report looked at information supplied by major technology companies covering the second half of 2025.
According to eSafety, Microsoft was the only company examined that reported using proactive technology on some services to identify possible child sexual abuse occurring during a live video call.
Microsoft said artificial intelligence could be used to assess whether a call contained child sexual exploitation or abuse imagery in near real time. If detected, video capability could be disabled.
eSafety has raised similar concerns before. Its previous transparency reports also pointed to limited industry action to detect and stop child sexual exploitation occurring through livestreams and video calls.
That matters because livestreamed abuse differs from harmful material that has already been created and uploaded. The abuse may be taking place while someone is watching or directing it from somewhere else in the world.
Why this matters in Australia
International Justice Mission Australia says stronger safeguards are needed because Australians are among those creating demand for this form of abuse.
Research cited by the organisation found Australia consistently ranked among the leading countries associated with suspicious payments linked to online child sexual exploitation in the Philippines.
An IJM study also estimated that in 2022, one in 100 children in the Philippines had been trafficked to produce new child sexual abuse material for paying offenders online.
IJM Australia CEO David Braga says technology companies should be required to do more to detect and prevent abuse occurring through their services.
“If, after all this time, these companies still aren’t willing to lift their game and ensure their platforms are child-friendly, then they must be compelled to do so through legislation,” he said.
What can parents do?
This is not a problem parents can solve simply by checking privacy settings or watching every call their child makes.
But there are some sensible precautions families can take.
For younger children, video calling is safest when parents know who they are communicating with and calls take place in shared areas of the home.
Children should also know that they can end a call immediately if someone asks them to undress, perform sexual acts, move to another platform, keep conversations secret or share intimate images.
Most importantly, make it clear that if something disturbing happens online, they can tell you without worrying that they will automatically lose their device or get into trouble.
The pressure is now on technology companies
Australia’s online safety rules already expect digital services to take reasonable steps to minimise illegal and harmful material.
The Federal Government is also developing a proposed Digital Duty of Care intended to place greater responsibility on technology companies to prevent foreseeable online harms.
For child safety advocates, however, the key issue is whether future rules will require companies to build protections into their products rather than relying on children and families to protect themselves after something has gone wrong.
For parents, that distinction matters.
A child should not have to encounter abuse before a platform acts.
Information provided by International Justice Mission Australia
