{"id":661,"date":"2026-05-20T20:17:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T03:17:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4afcb9ffe81147b70772808a7a66d6c8"},"modified":"2026-05-22T16:43:40","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T16:43:40","slug":"australian-judge-fines-x-465000-for-online-safety-breach-after-3-year-court-battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/?p=661","title":{"rendered":"Australian judge fines X $465,000 for online safety breach after 3-year court battle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 An Australian judge fined X Corp.<\/a><\/span> 650,000 Australian dollars ($465,000) on Thursday for failing to provide information to an online safety watchdog in 2023 about how it tackled child sexual exploitation content.<\/p>\n

Federal Court Justice Michael Wheelahan also ordered the Texas-based social media giant to pay AU$100,000 ($71,000) of eSafety<\/a><\/span> Commissioner Julie Inman Grant\u2019s court costs within 45 days.<\/p>\n

The ruling ends a three-year legal battle in which X had argued it was not obliged to answer eSafety\u2019s questions.<\/p>\n

X admitted it contravened Australia\u2019s Online Safety Act by failing to provide a report that fully answered questions posed by eSafety<\/a><\/span> in a transparency notice issued on Feb. 22, 2023, the agency\u2019s lawyer Christopher Tran said. X had to provide the answers by March 29 that year.<\/p>\n

X\u2019s lawyer Perry Herzfeld told the judge eSafety did not allege that the contravening conduct continued after May 5, 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a period of change and transition for the company,\u201d Herzfeld said, in a reference to Elon Musk taking over.<\/p>\n

eSafety had sent the notice to Twitter<\/a><\/span> Inc., which merged with X in March 2023.<\/p>\n

Tran said both X and eSafety agreed the fine was appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s appropriate because X Corp. is obviously a large company and a large figure is needed to ensure that a contravention is not treated as a cost of doing business,\u201d Tran said.<\/p>\n

In July last year, the full Federal Court<\/a><\/span> ruled that X was required to respond to eSafety\u2019s transparency notice. That ruling upheld a judge\u2019s decision in October 2024.<\/p>\n

Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said meaningful transparency was critical to holding technology companies to account.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn early 2023, we asked some of the world\u2019s biggest technology companies, including Twitter, to report on steps they were taking to comply with the Australian Basic Online Safety Expectations in relation to the proliferation of child sexual exploitation and abuse materials on their platforms,\u201d Inman Grant said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not only a key part of our work as Australia\u2019s online safety regulator, it also provides the Australian public with important information about how these companies are tackling the worst-of-the-worst content on their platforms,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) \u2014 An Australian judge fined X Corp. 650,000 Australian dollars ($465,000) on Thursday for failing to provide information to an online safety … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":662,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,1,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=661"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":694,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661\/revisions\/694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newshouse.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}