Meta has new anti-sextortion tools, but charity says they're 'far too little, far too late' to protect youth

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has announced it's testing new tools designed to protect its users from sextortion and other forms of online intimate image abuse.

«We've worked closely with experts for years to understand and track these scammers' behaviors,» Meta said Thursday in a news release describing the new tools. «This is an incredibly adversarial space, where determined criminals continue to evolve their tactics to evade our protections.»

But the Canadian Centre for Child Protection says the new tools being tested have come years too late and do not go far enough.

«We've been begging for some of the things that they've announced here for probably a decade,» said Signy Arnason, the centre's associate executive director. «While some of the things here may be helpful, it really seems like a Band-Aid approach. The responsibility still rests with kids to keep themselves safe — and there's just so much more these platforms could be doing.»

Sextortion is a growing crime in Canada, and the perpetrators often use social media as a platform. The perpetrators will pose as someone they are not, share an explicit image with someone, lure them into sending an intimate image in reply, and then threaten to send the victim's images to their contacts if they don't send money.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection receives 10 reports of sextortion every day, but it says many attempts are never reported to authorities.

The crime can have tragic consequences. Last year, 17-year-old Harry Burke died by suicide in eastern Prince Edward Island just hours after sending nude images of himself to someone who claimed to be a teenaged girl.

«We've got a serious problem on our hands here and this has been going on for far too