Australia’s online safety regulator has fined Elon Musk’s X social media platform $386,000 for failing to address child sexual exploitation and sexual extortion, as well as live streaming of child sexual abuse.
The regulator’s Basic Online Safety Expectations report singled out X for “serious shortfalls” and non-compliance with legal notices regarding these issues. Among the five companies probed, X was the only one to receive a fine, as it provided incomplete or inaccurate responses to key questions related to child safety.
In the wake of this regulatory action, X’s response to child safety issues has come under scrutiny. The company faced criticism for its language analysis technology, which is employed to detect child sexual exploitation and abuse activity, being limited to just 12 languages.
This is significantly fewer than other major social media platforms like TikTok and Google, which use 73 and 71 languages, respectively, for this purpose. T
he shortfall in language coverage means that some of the top five languages spoken in Australia were not monitored by X, potentially creating vulnerabilities in identifying harmful content.
Moreover, X was faulted for not using technology to detect grooming, which is an essential element of child safety on online platforms. While the company did employ reputable databases to block links to known child sexual exploitation material, it lags behind some of its competitors in implementing robust safety measures.
The report also highlighted X’s inability to answer key questions related to the number of safety and public policy staff remaining in post after a series of mass layoffs that followed Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in October 2022.
The company’s admission that its detection of child sexual exploitation material dipped to 75% in the three months after Musk’s takeover was also considered a significant issue. However, it has since improved to an unspecified level.
X now has 28 days to decide whether to request the withdrawal of the infringement notice or pay the penalty. This fine follows a string of challenges faced by X, especially in Europe, where it has been accused of disseminating anti-Semitic speech, hatred toward minorities and the LGBTQ community, and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
As regulatory pressures increase, social media platforms are finding themselves under greater scrutiny to ensure the safety and compliance of their services, particularly regarding child protection and online harm at its worst.
