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The company formerly known as Twitter has let the deadline to pay a $610,500 fine pass.
Twenty-eight days after X was fined by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner over its lack of response to questions regarding child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on its platform, the company has failed to pay up.
The Office of the eSafety Commissioner first raised concerns over the lack of social media moderation of CSAM in February, when it contacted X, as well as Google, TikTok, Twitch, and Discord.
“What we are talking about here are serious crimes playing out on these platforms committed by predatory adults against innocent children, and the community expects every tech company to be taking meaningful action,” eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in October, when the fine was first issued.
While Google got away with a warning over what the commissioner called “generic responses to specific questions”, X’s complete lack of compliance garnered eSafety’s ire.
The company failed to respond to “a number of key questions” regarding its time to respond to complaints, as well as the measures in place to detect CSAM in live streams. X also failed to “adequately answer questions relating to the number of safety and public policy staff” still employed by the company.
X was given 28 days to pay a $610,500 fine over its non-compliance or to provide answers to the original questions. X has now failed to do either.
“Twitter/X has not paid the infringement notice within the allotted time frame, and eSafety is now considering further steps,” an eSafety spokesperson said in a widely reported statement.
“If X does not pay the fine or does not comply with the request for information, the eSafety Commissioner could seek a civil penalty from the Federal Court, which could lead to daily fines of up to $782,000, backdated to February 2023, when the first notice was issued. It could add up to millions of dollars.”
Cyber Daily has reached out to X for comment, but the company rarely responds to media requests since Elon Musk’s takeover.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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