Australian eSafety Commissioner publishes draft industry standards for online services under duty of care framework

The Australian eSafety Commissioner has released draft industry standards that would require social media platforms, messaging services and gaming networks to implement proactive systems for detecting and removing child sexual exploitation material, grooming and sextortion. The standards, published for consultation under the Online Safety Act, set out enforceable expectations for risk assessment, user reporting mechanisms, content moderation response times, and transparency reporting. Platforms operating in Australia would be required to demonstrate how their safety systems identify high-risk interactions and protect children from abuse in private messaging environments, where the majority of exploitation now occurs.

Meeting the proactive-detection obligation requires technology that identifies harm as it emerges in direct-message conversations, not after a report is filed. The Guardii platform, backed by Startmate and deployed across Discord, Snapchat, Instagram and Roblox, uses pattern-recognition AI to detect grooming, sextortion, child sexual abuse material and age-inappropriate contact in real time, surfacing escalating threat behaviour to parents, schools or law enforcement before a child is exploited. By analysing conversational dynamics rather than reading every word, the system flags coercion and sustained targeting while preserving privacy for benign exchanges, enabling platforms to comply with duty-of-care obligations without blanket surveillance or waiting for a victim to self-report.