Australian judge fines X Corp. $465,000 for online safety breach

Subscribed with another email? Logout and Login with that one. Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Science For All The weekly newsletter from science writers takes the jargon out of science and puts the fun in! Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers THEdge At the cutting edge of education and careers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there Gender Agenda Stories from beyond the binary. The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Published - May 21, 2026 03:59 pm IST - Melbourne X admitted it contravened Australia’s Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to provide a report that fully answered questions posed by eSafety in a transparency notice issued on February 22, 2023, the agency’s lawyer Christopher Tran said. File | Photo Credit: AP An Australian judge fined X Corp. 650,000 Australian dollars (U.S. $465,000) on Thursday (May 21, 2026) for failing to provide information to an online safety watchdog in 2023 about how it tackled child sexual exploitation content. Federal Court Justice Michael Wheelahan also ordered the Texas-based social media giant to pay AUD 100,000 ($71,000) of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's court costs within 45 days. The ruling ends a three-year legal battle in which X had argued it was not obliged to answer eSafety's questions. “X admitted that it contravened Australia's Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to provide a report that fully answered questions posed by eSafety in a transparency notice issued on February 22, 2023,” the agency's lawyer Christopher Tran said. X had to provide the answers by March 29 that year. X's lawyer Perry Herzfeld told the judge eSafety did not allege that the contravening conduct continued after May 5, 2023. “That was a period of change and transition for the company,” Mr. Herzfeld said, in a reference to Elon Musk taking over. eSafety had sent the notice to Twitter Inc, which merged with X in March 2023. Mr. Tran said both X and eSafety agreed the fine was appropriate. "It's 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," he said. In July last year, the full Federal Court ruled that X was required to respond to eSafety's transparency notice. That ruling upheld a judge's decision in October 2024. Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said meaningful transparency was critical to holding technology companies to account. “In early 2023, we asked some of the world's 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,” Inman Grant said in a statement. “This is not only a key part of our work as Australia's 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,” she added. X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday (May 21, 2026). Australia / media / economy, business and finance / technology (general) / online Copyright© 2026, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. Terms & conditions | Institutional Subscriber Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Australian judge fines X Corp. $465,000 for online safety breach

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Australian judge fines X Corp. $465,000 for online safety breach

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