Senator Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, on Thursday opened a congressional probe into eight tech giants over allegations the companies failed to sufficiently report online child sexual exploitation, hampering law enforcement investigations. 

The senator, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, also released new information provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) detailing the alleged reporting deficiencies in tips submitted by eight technology companies. 

These eight companies, Meta, Amazon AI Services, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X.AI, Grindr and Roblox, collectively made up 81% of all suspected child exploitation reports received through NCMEC’s CyberTipline last year. NCMEC was established by Congress in 1984 to act as a clearinghouse for law enforcement and others to prevent child exploitation.

“Based on information provided to my office, I am concerned that some companies have not provided NCMEC and law enforcement with sufficient data needed to protect kids and prosecute suspected predators,” Grassley wrote in his letters to the eight companies. 

You can read Grassley’s letters to the eight technology companies–Meta, Amazon AI Services, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, X.AI, Grindr and Roblox–here. 

Grassley says companies failed to include important information for investigators

Grassley says that the data provided by NCMEC show that the technology companies have regularly failed to include important information for investigators, like location data on users and suspects. He also said some of these companies have failed to disclose child sex abuse materials in AI training. 

“For almost thirty years, NCMEC has worked tirelessly to combat online child sexual exploitation by attempting to persuade Electronic Service Providers (ESP's) to detect, report and remove child sexual exploitation on their platforms and improve the quality and substance of their CyberTipline reports,” NCMEC wrote to Chairman Grassley. 

NCMEC told the senator that one of the biggest problems it identified is that often the tech giants will submit reports to the tipline that were later deemed “inactionable” due to a lack of sufficient information for investigators. The center said these companies would publicly tout the volume of their submissions, but fail to disclose that many are unhelpful at best. 

“Many ESPs regularly tout the number of reports they submit to the CyberTipline, but fail to disclose that millions of reports lack basic information… This leaves children unprotected online, subjects survivors to revictimization, enables sexual offenders to remain freely online and wastes valuable and limited law enforcement resources,” the center added.  

For example, none of Amazon AI Services’ more than 1.1 million reports to the tipline were deemed actionable by the center due to the company’s failure to “provide location or suspect information.”  

A representative from the company informed NCMEC that the company failed to provide these details because “[Amazon’s] systems were intentionally designed not to collect or retain information about the underlying content or the associated user.” 

Other companies, like Meta, which owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram and has made over 11 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation, “has improved” its reporting, though gaps remain. 

Suicidal ideation of children missed almost a dozen times

For example, nearly 1.2 million of those reports had “consistency and quality issues” that prevented action by law enforcement. According to NCMEC, Meta also failed to “escalate suicidal ideation by a child” on 11 occasions. Additionally, Meta’s reporting was reportedly “duplicative” and “fragmented,” which strained law enforcement and NCMEC staff. 

The NCMEC also told Senator Grassley that some platforms showed a lack of willingness to engage to fix issues regarding their reporting. Grindr, which describes itself as a “social networking app for LGBTQ people,” routinely failed to provide location information, including for reports to the tipline that the company deemed “high-priority.” In all, in 2025, only 4% of the platform tips contained actionable information. 

The center said Grindr is “generally unresponsive or provides passive responses indicating it is working to address issues raised by NCMEC but fails to reflect a timeline or produce any improvements in its reporting.” 

A spokesperson for Grindr told Just the News that “We appreciate Senator Grassley’s concerns and welcome the opportunity to detail the protections and policies we have in place to proactively monitor for, identify, and report CSAM to NCMEC. As a member of the Tech Coalition, a group organized primarily to fight child sexual abuse online, keeping children safe is a top priority for our team every day. We work with Safer by Thorn to scan user-uploaded images, including those in private albums, for CSAM and we report any identified CSAM to NCMEC.” 

“Additionally, we actively cooperate with law enforcement to support investigations and help hold those who misuse our platform accountable,” the spokesperson added. 

Other companies reportedly sent tips that included information not relevant to the purpose of NCMEC’s tipline, straining investigative resources. For example, NCMEC said the online chatroom platform Discord has “routinely reported content unrelated to child sexual exploitation” including content depicting adults, graphic gore, or animal abuse. 

“This has caused major issues for NCMEC workflows and negatively impacted law enforcement receiving these Discord referrals,” the center wrote. Discord said that the reporting errors were linked to a “bug” and implemented a fix earlier this year. NCMEC noted an improvement in Discord’s reporting since then, the letter shows. 

"We’re grateful for the Senator’s leadership over the years on this critical issue. Discord has a longstanding, collaborative relationship with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and we remain in regular communication with them to ensure we fulfill our reporting obligations and support their important work,” a Discord spokesperson told Just the News. “We look forward to continuing to engage with the Senator on this and other shared priorities."  

None of the other companies responded to requests for comment from Just the News by press time. 

Incomplete reporting information hamstrings investigators

Grassley also noted issues with how the technology companies report child exploitation material uncovered in artificial intelligence training sets or users that engage with such material using the systems. 

For example, after Amazon AI Services identified child sexual abuse material in the data sets it used to train AI models, it generated more than one million reports to the NCMEC tipline, which did not include actionable information like website URLs or content. This stopped NCMEC investigators and law enforcement from assessing the reports.

Despite public reporting in January 2026 that Amazon now believed much of the detected material may have been false positives, NCMEC said the company failed to notify the center until shortly before the public report despite repeated requests for more information on its tips throughout 2025. 

Grassley first sent a letter to NCMEC in early March asking for more data on the center’s interactions with ESP's details about how they report suspected child exploitation materials and information about how companies are investigating such materials in artificial intelligence.