Elon Musk's X Faces $386K Penalty In Australia For Dodging Child Abuse Probe

The Australian regulator has imposed a fine of $386,000 on Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) in response to the platform’s alleged inadequate compliance with an investigation into child abuse prevention measures. 

What Happened: The e-Safety Commission in Australia has accused Musk’s social media platform of failing to provide satisfactory responses during a probe into their practices concerning child abuse material, reported Reuters.  

“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,” said Commissioner Julie Inman Grant during an interview.

“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.” 

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Gran also revealed that the commission has warned Sundar Pichai-led Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Google for not fully complying with its request for information about child abuse content. They deemed the search engine giant’s responses to some questions “generic.” 

In response, Google said that it was disappointed by the warning as it had cooperated with the regulator, the report noted. 

Why It’s Important: Under Australian laws introduced in 2021, internet companies can be compelled to provide information about their online safety practices or face financial penalties. 

If X fails to pay the fine, the regulator can take the matter to court, according to Grant, who was a public policy director for X until 2016. 

Although Musk has repeatedly asserted to have purged child abuse content from X, child sexual material was found on the platform by researchers. In July, he received massive flak for reinstating the account of a QAnon follower after it was suspended for violating the microblogging site’s zero-tolerance policy against child sexual exploitation. 

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