Australian eSafety Commissioner orders Discord to explain child safety controls after CSAM reports
Guardii Analysis
Australia's eSafety Commissioner issued a formal notice to Discord in mid-September 2024 requiring the platform to explain its measures for detecting and removing child sexual abuse material, following a rise in reports of CSAM on the service. The Commissioner cited data showing Discord accounted for a disproportionate share of image-based abuse reports relative to its user base and warned that the platform could face penalties if its child-safety systems are found inadequate under the Online Safety Act.
When a regulator demands evidence that a platform can detect and remove CSAM in direct messages, the platform needs a solution that operates at the point of transmission rather than relying on retrospective user reports. Guardii's anti-CSAM module scans conversations in real time on Discord and other messaging services, identifying the distribution of abusive material the moment it is sent, blocking it before delivery, and logging the incident for regulatory disclosure, all while analyzing patterns of behavior rather than storing or surfacing the content itself to human moderators.