The Australian eSafety commission has fined social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, $610,500 for failing to cooperate with a probe into anti-child-abuse practices.
Key points:
- The commissioner said X failed to answer questions put to it in February
- The proliferation of online child sexual abuse material is growing globally
- The eSafety commission can pursue X in court if it refuses to pay the fine
As part of a report by the commission earlier this year featuring X, TikTok, Google, Twitch and Discord, the commission found some of the biggest tech companies were not living up to their responsibilities to tackle the proliferation of child sexual exploitation.
The eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, can now require online service providers to report on how they are meeting any or all of the expectations as part of the eSafety Act.
“This was about the worst kind of harm, child sexual exploitation as well as extortion, and we need to make sure that companies have trust and safety teams, they’re using people processes and technologies to tackle this kind of content,” she told ABC News Channel.
“Frankly, X did not provide us with the answers to very basic questions we’d ask them like, ‘How many trust and safety people do you have left?'”
“Now that’s critical to really understanding not only the scope of the problem but also the scale.”
(ABC)
