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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has delivered an ultimatum to social media platform Twitter — explain how it plans to handle the proliferation of online hate speech or face the financial consequences.
“Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,” said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant in an announcement. “A third of all complaints about online hate reported to us are now happening on Twitter.”
The move comes in the wake of the eccentric billionaire’s controversial buyout of Twitter, after which he laid off swathes of the company’s staff, firing 6,500 of the 8,000 people who work for the company. At the same time, Musk also allowed tens of thousands of previously banned accounts to return and has himself taken part in campaigns against journalists and ex-staff who speak out against his management style.
This is despite Twitter’s own terms of use expressly forbidding hate speech and abuse. The reporting of such abuse is also problematic, and very rarely is such speech removed.
“We are seeing a worrying surge in hate online,” Inman Grant said. “eSafety research shows that nearly one in five Australians have experienced some form of online hate. This level of online abuse is already inexcusably high, but if you’re a First Nations Australian, you are disabled or identify as LGBTIQ+, you experience online hate at double the rate of the rest of the population.”
eSafety has used its regulatory powers to issue a legal notice to the company, demanding it respond to its queries. Failure to comply within 28 days will lead to the company being fined $700,000 for each day that it remains silent.
“We need accountability from these platforms and action to protect their users, and you cannot have accountability without transparency, and that’s what legal notices like this one are designed to achieve,” Inman Grant said.
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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