Major platforms have the tools to stop sexual extortion, but they're not using them – new report

Australia's eSafety Commissioner released a transparency report on July 13, 2026 revealing that major social media and messaging platforms are failing to deploy available tools to detect predictable sextortion patterns despite possessing the technology and threat intelligence to do so. The report, drawing on mandatory disclosures under Australia's Online Safety Act, found that platforms are not adequately using pattern detection to identify sextortion, which the Commissioner received more than 3,300 reports of in 2025. Supporting research from the Australian Institute of Criminology found that more than one in ten Australian adolescents have experienced sexual extortion, over half before turning 16, with two in five targeted using digitally manipulated material and two-thirds by someone met only online. National research published in the same week found that among young people who had sexual images shared without consent, one in four reported AI involvement.

The eSafety finding validates the operational principle underlying Guardii: that sextortion is detectable because it is structured. A Meta Business Partner with real-time detection capability across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other messaging platforms, Guardii is engineered to identify the pattern the regulator says platforms are ignoring: the unsolicited approach, the rapid escalation to sexual conversation, the coerced image, the threat, and the demand. The platform does not require a victim to report after the harm has occurred or rely on retrospective content moderation. It detects the threat as the conversation develops, blocks or flags the hostile contact before it reaches the child, and surfaces a crisis signal to the parent, school or professional equipped to intervene, applying the very technology the eSafety Commissioner has documented the industry possesses but declines to use at scale.