X Fined By Australia After Failing To Disclose Measures To Fight Child Exploitation On Platform

Australian officials were quoted as saying that X failed to comply with a national law that requires platforms to disclose what they are doing to fight child exploitation on their platforms.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter, has been slapped with a hefty fine after failing to failing to disclose its efforts to check child exploitation, the media has reported. X has been fined A$610,500 ($386,000) after the micro-blogging platform told officials that its automated detection of abusive material declined after it was acquired by Musk.

According to a report by The New York Times, Australian officials were quoted as saying that X failed to comply with a national law that requires platforms to disclose what they are doing to fight child exploitation on their platforms. They said they had sent legal notices to other tech giants such as Google, Discord, TikTok and Twitch earliet this year, asking them to explain their measures for detecting and removing child sexual abuse material.

"Companies can make empty statements like ‘Child exploitation is our top priority,’ so what we’re saying is show us,” Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s commissioner in charge of online safety, said in an interview, the NYT report added.

“This is important not only in terms of deterrence in the types of defiance we are seeing from the companies but because this information is in the public interest.”

This comes as a big blow for the the micro-blogging company which was acquired by Musk last year for $44 billion. The company is fighting to retain advertisers amid complaints of going soft on content moderation.

This comes days after X was hit by a new trademark lawsuit from a marketing agency. A legal marketing agency sued X Corp earlier this month and said that the micro-blogging platform's new name infringes its trademark by incorporating the letter "X". The lawsuit also claimed that X Corp, which owner Musk began rebranding to X from Twitter in July, was likely to cause consumer confusion. The lawsuit has been filed by Windermere, Florida-based X Social Media.