An Australian court has ruled that Elon Musk’s social media platform X must pay an A$610,500 ($418,100) fine levied by a watchdog over its failure to adequately respond to queries about its effort to eradicate child abuse content.
In Australia, all social media companies must be able to explain how they are meeting basic requirements for online safety, as outlined by the Government.
Musk’s company had submitted a petition to have the fine wiped, but a judge on Friday, October 4 ordered that they pay all proceedings.
X argued that it was not bound to respond to a notice issued by the Australian government to Twitter after Musk bought the site and rolled it into a new corporate entity, thus removing liability.
“Had X Corp’s argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company’s merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement.
The Federal Court has today ruled X Corp. was obliged to respond to a transparency notice seeking information about measures to address the proliferation of child sexual exploitation material on its platform. Read more: https://t.co/69HsSsDgMx pic.twitter.com/3a8GN740UZ
— eSafety Commissioner (@eSafetyOffice) October 4, 2024
Australia has been increasing pressure on global tech companies to better police material on their platforms. Elon Musk especially has been clashing with regulators in the country. In January this year, Elon Musk drew their attention when X reinstated over 6000 banned accounts, a move which Australia’s eSafety Commissioner called a “perfect storm for safety to be diminished”.
In April after two tragic stabbing incidents in Australia, the government ordered social media platforms to remove videos of the attacks. Meta complied, but X pushed back, with Elon Musk stating, “No president, prime minister, or judge has authority over all of Earth!” The regulator ultimately withdrew its case and the posts remained up.
More recently, Australia announced plans in September to issue fines of up to 5 percent of a platform’s global revenue for failure to adequately prevent the spread of misinformation. Elon Musk responded by calling them fascists.
Sky News reported that as a result of this “war” with Musk, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has received online harassment including death threats.
Featured image credit: Midjourney
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