Australia fines Twitter/X more than $600,000 for not answering questions on child abuse content

X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has been charged more than AUD $600,000 by an Australian safety watchdog over child exploitative content concerts.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner has fined the social media giant over the weekend after failing to respond about how it is cracking down on child abuse content.

In February, the eSafety commissioner issued legal notices to X under Australia’s Online Safety Act.

The new safety act, introduced in 2021, requires tech companies to reveal what measures they have in place to ‘detect, remove and prevent child sexual abuse material and grooming’.

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X has 28 days to either respond or pay up.

Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Skype, Snap, WhatsApp and Omegle were also issued a legal notice earlier this year; however, X and Google failed to comply with the notice given to them.

According to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, Google had given many generic answers about how it was addressing this issue, while X had left many sections ‘blank’.

“We really can’t hope to have any accountability from the online industry in tackling this issue without meaningful transparency which is what these notices are designed to surface,” Ms Inman Grant said.

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“Our first report featuring Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Skype, Snap, WhatsApp and Omegle uncovered serious shortfalls in how these companies were tackling this issue.

“This latest report also reveals similar gaps in how these five tech companies are dealing with the problem and how they are tackling the rise in sexual extortion and we need them all to do better.”

Elon Musk has previously stated that removing child exploitative content on the platform was his number one priority.

However, the eSafety report found that automatic detection of child abuse material fell from 90 per cent to 70 per cent after Musk took over the company and began cutting 80 per cent of staff.

“Twitter/X has stated publicly that tackling child sexual exploitation is the number 1 priority for the company, but it can’t just be empty talk, we need to see words backed up with tangible action,” Ms Grant said.

“If Twitter/X and Google can’t come up with answers to key questions about how they are tackling child sexual exploitation they either don’t want to answer for how it might be perceived publicly or they need better systems to scrutinise their own operations. Both scenarios are concerning to us and suggest they are not living up to their responsibilities and the expectations of the Australian community.”