Australia’s online safety watchdog said on Monday it had fined X — the social media platform formerly known as Twitter — 610,500 Australian dollars (USD 385,000) for failing to fully explain how it tackled child sexual exploitation content.
Australia’s eSafety Commission describes itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safe online. The commission issued legal transparency notices early this year to X and other platforms questioning what they were doing to tackle a proliferation of child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion and the livestreaming of child sexual abuse.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said X and Google had not complied with the notices because both companies had failed to adequately respond to a number of questions. The platform renamed X by its new owner Elon Musk was the worst offender, providing no answers to some questions including how many staff remained on the trust and safety team that worked on preventing harmful and illegal content since Musk took over, Inman Grant said.
“I think there’s a degree of defiance there,” Inman Grant said.
“If you’ve got a basic H.R. (human resources) system or payroll, you’ll know how many people are on each team,” she added.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After Musk completed his acquisition of the company in October last year, he drastically cut costs and shed thousands of jobs.