Australian Court Upholds $418,000 Fine for Musk’s X Over Anti-Child Abuse Investigation, Reports Reuters

SYDNEY (Reuters) – An Australian court confirmed on Friday that Elon Musk’s platform, X, must pay a fine of A$610,500 ($418,000) for its lack of cooperation with a regulator’s inquiry regarding its measures to combat child abuse.

X contested the fine, but the Federal Court of Australia ruled that the platform was required to respond to a request from the eSafety Commissioner, the country’s internet safety authority, seeking information on its practices to address child sexual exploitation material.

In 2022, Musk took the platform, formerly known as Twitter, private. The company had argued that it was not obligated to respond to the request made in early 2023 because it was integrated into a new corporate entity under Musk’s control, thereby supposedly eliminating liability.

eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant emphasized in a statement that accepting X Corp’s argument could have set a troubling precedent, allowing foreign companies to avoid regulatory responsibilities in Australia through mergers.

Additionally, eSafety has initiated civil proceedings against X due to its noncompliance.

The platform did not provide a comment on the matter by Friday.

This incident is not the first confrontation between Musk and the Australian internet safety authority. Earlier this year, the eSafety Commissioner mandated X to remove posts depicting a bishop in Australia being stabbed during a sermon. X challenged this order in court, arguing that a regulator from one country should not dictate what global internet users can access, and ultimately kept the posts online after the Australian regulator dropped its case.

Musk claimed at that time that the order constituted censorship and labeled it as part of a broader scheme by global organizations to impose safety regulations worldwide.