Fighting child sexual abuse online: interim measure protecting children now reinstated

The European Union Council reinstated temporary derogation rules on 23 July 2026, allowing online service providers to resume voluntary detection, reporting and removal of child sexual abuse material on their platforms after the initial interim regulation lapsed on 3 April 2026. The measure, adopted as Regulation (EU) 2026/1881 following European Parliament approval on 9 July 2026, permits providers of number-independent interpersonal communications services to use specified technologies to detect CSAM and solicitation of children, subject to conditions and safeguards, and applies until 3 April 2028 while long-term legislative framework negotiations continue.

Voluntary detection systems that rely on provider discretion create uneven coverage and often depend on file-matching technologies that cannot identify newly created material or detect grooming and sextortion in progress before images are shared. Guardii operates independently of platform reporting decisions, deploying anti-grooming, anti-sextortion and anti-CSAM detection at the conversation layer to identify coercion, escalation and solicitation in real time as direct messages are exchanged. The AI platform, a Meta Business Partner, surfaces the shape and seriousness of a conversation to the entities responsible for a child's safety rather than waiting for a file to be uploaded and a provider to voluntarily scan and report it, closing the operational gap between when abuse begins and when authorities are alerted.