Australian court upholds order for X to pay $418,000 fine over anti-child abuse probe

SYDNEY (Reuters): An Australian court upheld an order on Friday for Elon Musk’s X to pay a fine of A$610,500 ($418,000) for failing to cooperate with a regulator’s request for information about anti-child-abuse practices.

X had challenged the fine but the Federal Court of Australia ruled it was obliged to respond to a notice from the eSafety Commissioner, an internet safety regulator, seeking information about steps to address child sexual exploitation material on the platform.

Musk took X, then called Twitter, private in 2022. But the company had argued it was not bound to respond to the notice in early 2023 because it was folded into a new Musk-controlled corporate entity, removing liability.

“Had X Corp’s argument been accepted by the Court it could have set the concerning precedent that a foreign company’s merger with another foreign company might enable it to avoid regulatory obligations in Australia,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement following the verdict.

eSafety has also started civil proceedings against X because of its noncompliance.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

This is not the first conflict between Musk and the Australian internet safety regulator. The eSafety Commissioner earlier this year ordered X to remove posts showing a bishop in Australia being stabbed during a sermon.

X challenged the order in court on the grounds that a regulator in one country should not decide what internet users viewed around the world, and ultimately kept the posts up after the Australian regulator withdrew its case.

Musk said at the time the order was censorship and shared posts describing the order, which would have applied globally, as a plot by the World Economic Forum to impose eSafety rules on the world.