Australia fines Musk's X platform $386,000 over anti-child abuse gaps
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[October 16, 2023]
By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) -An Australian regulator has fined Elon Musk's social
media platform X A$610,500 ($386,000) for failing to cooperate with a
probe into anti-child abuse practices, a blow to a company that has
struggled to keep advertisers amid complaints it is going soft on
moderating content.
The e-Safety Commission fined X, the platform Musk rebranded from
Twitter, saying it failed to respond to questions including how long it
took to respond to reports of child abuse material on the platform and
the methods it used to detect it.
Though small compared to the $44 billion Musk paid for the website in
October 2022, the fine is a reputational hit for a company that has seen
a continuous revenue decline as advertisers cut spending on a platform
that has stopped most content moderation and reinstated thousands of
banned accounts.
Most recently the EU said it was investigating X for potential violation
of its new tech rules after the platform was accused of failing to rein
in disinformation in relation to Hamas's attack on Israel.
"If you've got answers to questions, if you're actually putting people,
processes and technology in place to tackle illegal content at scale,
and globally, and if it's your stated priority, it's pretty easy to
say," Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in an interview.
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"The only reason I can see to fail to answer important questions about
illegal content and conduct happening on platforms would be if you don't
have answers," added Inman Grant, who was a public policy director for X
until 2016.
X closed its Australian office after Musk's buyout, so there was no
local representative to respond to Reuters. A request for comment sent
to the San Francisco-based company's media email address was not
immediately answered.
Under Australian laws that took effect in 2021, the regulator can compel
internet companies to give information about their online safety
practices or face a fine. If X refuses to pay the fine, the regulator
can pursue the company in court, Grant said.
After taking the company private, Musk said in a post that "removing
child exploitation is priority #1". But the Australian regulator said
that when it asked X how it prevented child grooming on the platform, X
responded that it was "not a service used by large numbers of young
people".
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![](../images/101623PIX/busine59.jpg)
The logo of social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is seen
alongside the former logo in this illustration taken, July 24, 2023.
REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
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X told the regulator available anti-grooming technology was "not of
sufficient capability or accuracy to be deployed on Twitter".
Inman Grant said the commission also issued a warning to Alphabet's
Google for noncompliance with its request for information about
handling of child abuse content, calling the search engine giant's
responses to some questions "generic". Google said it had cooperated
with the regulator and was disappointed by the warning.
"We remain committed to these efforts and collaborating
constructively and in good faith with the e-Safety Commissioner,
government and industry on the shared goal of keeping Australians
safer online," said Google's director of government affairs and
public policy for Australia, Lucinda Longcroft.
X's noncompliance was more serious, the regulator said, including
failure to answer questions about how long it took to respond to
reports of child abuse, steps it took to detect child abuse in
livestreams and its numbers of content moderation, safety and public
policy staff.
The company confirmed to the regulator that it had cut 80% of its
workforce globally and has no public policy staff in Australia,
compared to two before Musk's takeover.
X told the regulator its proactive detection of child abuse material
in public posts dropped after Musk took the company private.
The company told the regulator it did not use tools to detect the
material in private messages because "the technology is still in
development", the regulator said. ($1 = 1.5833 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Kim Coghill and William
Mallard)
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