Australia’s Top Online Censor Fines X for Refusing to Answer Moderation Questions

CANBERRA, Australia — Australia’s top censor, E-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, issued a AU$610,500 (approximately $386,000) fine to X.com for violating the country’s new Online Safety Act.

The fine is reportedly the first instance of Inman Grant’s office penalizing an online platform over user-generated content.

Earlier this year, Inman Grant sent formal questions to several international online platforms demanding explanations as to “what they were doing to tackle a proliferation of child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion and the livestreaming of child sexual abuse,” Associated Press reported Monday.

Twitter, TikTok and Google will be forced to answer questions about how they tackle child sexual abuse and blackmail attempts on their platforms after the Australian eSafety commissioner issued legal notices to the companies.

Although Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, TikTok, Discord and Omegle offered replies that appear to satisfy Inman Grant, X.com and Google

The tech companies, as well as gaming platforms Twitch and Discord, will have 35 days to respond to the commissioner’s questions or risk fines of up to $687,000 a day.

The legal demands come six months after similar notices were issued to Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Snap and Omegle, she considers that X and Google “did not comply with the notices, with Google giving generic responses to some specific questions, while some questions to X went entirely unanswered,” The Guardian reported Monday.

“I think there’s a degree of defiance there,” Inman Grant told the AP justifying the six-figure fine to X.com, focusing on the company’s refusal to answers her questions about how many staffersremained on its trust and safety team since Elon Musk purchased the company in 2022.

Google has been given a formal warning, while X was given an infringement notice and now has 28 days to either pay the fine or provide responses to all her questions.

An Anti-Porn Bureaucrat With Broad Oversight Powers

As XBIZ reported, the vocally anti-porn Inman Grant was appointed by the former conservative government of Australia. She has acknowledged having conversations with U.S.-based, religiously-inspired lobby NCOSE and even appeared on an NCOSE podcast at the Coalition to End Sexual Exploitation summit in July 2021, shortly after the Australian Parliament passed the country’s Online Safety Act.

Before moving to Australia, Inman Grant received degrees from Boston University and American University, worked in politics in Washington D.C. and then for tech giants Microsoft, Twitter and Adobe. According to her official bio, she now claims to “lead the world’s first government regulatory agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online.” She was reappointed for a further five-year term by the Australian government in Jan. 2022.

In August, the liberal-leaning Australian government announced that it will not require adult websites to implement age verification, one of Inman Grant’s main objectives. According to a report by The Guardian, the decision was made due to “concerns about privacy and the lack of maturity of the technology.”

Inman Grant submitted her road map for imposing age verification requirements on “online pornographic sites” back in March, but Communications Minister Michelle Rowland only released the document five months later, along with a response instructing Inman Grant “to work with the industry to develop a new code to educate parents on how to access filtering software and limit children’s access to such material or sites that are not appropriate,” the Guardian reported.

Main Image: Australia’s top online censor, E-Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant