An Australian judge fined X Corp. 650,000 Australian dollars ($465,000) on Thursday after the Texas-based social media giant failed 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 X to pay AU$100,000 ($71,000) of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant’s court costs within 45 days, closing out a three-year legal battle over whether the company had to answer the regulator at all.
Who Had to Answer, and Who Refused
The dispute began when eSafety issued a transparency notice on Feb. 22, 2023, asking X, then still tied to Twitter Inc. before the March 2023 merger into X, to report on steps it was taking under the Australian Basic Online Safety Expectations. The agency wanted answers about the proliferation of child sexual exploitation and abuse materials on the platform. X had to provide the answers by March 29 that year, but instead fought the demand in court, arguing it was not obliged to answer eSafety’s questions.
X admitted it contravened Australia’s Online Safety Act by failing to provide a report that fully answered the questions posed by eSafety, according to the agency’s lawyer Christopher Tran. Tran said both X and eSafety agreed the fine was appropriate. He said, “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.”
The Regulator’s Paper Trail
The ruling ends a three-year legal battle in which X challenged the authority of the online safety watchdog. In July last year, the full Federal Court ruled that X was required to respond to eSafety’s transparency notice, upholding a judge’s decision in October 2024. Those rulings left the company with less room to dodge the regulator’s questions, but only after years of legal delay.
X’s lawyer Perry Herzfeld told the judge that eSafety did not allege the contravening conduct continued after May 5, 2023. Herzfeld said, “That was a period of change and transition for the company,” referring to Elon Musk taking over. The line lands as a neat corporate alibi: transition at the top, while the regulator still had to drag answers out of the company below.
What the Watchdog Said It Was For
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, said meaningful transparency was critical to holding technology companies to account. In early 2023, she said, “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.” She added, “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.”
That is the language of oversight, but the facts show how much power sits with the platform until a court forces the issue. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday, leaving the regulator’s account and the court’s order as the only public record in the moment.
The fine and costs order now put a price on X’s refusal to answer a public watchdog about child sexual exploitation content on its platform. The case also shows how long a large company can stall before the machinery of regulation finally catches up, and how much work it takes for a public agency to pry even basic information out of a corporate giant.