Elon Musk accused of failing to stop spread of child sexual exploitation material on Twitter
Australian authorities have ordered Elon Musk to prove he is delivering on his vow to rid Twitter of child porn amid growing concerns it has instead become even darker and more dangerous under the billionaire’s ownership.
Australian authorities have ordered Elon Musk to prove he is delivering on his vow to rid Twitter of child porn amid growing concerns it has instead become even darker and more dangerous under the billionaire’s ownership.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal Sydney-based eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant has served a legal notice under the Online Safety Act compelling Twitter to explain what it is doing to stop the reported sale of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) material on the social-media platform as well as disclose whether its algorithms intentionally amplify the worst of the World Wide Web.
Google and TikTok have been hit with similar demands to demonstrate within 35 days how they protect Australians – children in particular – or face fines of nearly $5m per week.
eSafety has conducted 76,000 investigations since 2017 into CSEA material. Tech companies made more than 29 million reports to the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children in 2021. Ms Inman Grant said that was likely to represent the “tip of a very large iceberg”, with the true scale of the problem unknown mainly because of big tech’s lack of commitment to proactive detection.
Her new bid to get straight answers on detection and removal of vile “class one content” comes as Australia’s online sector nears a separate deadline to finalise codes that would set mandatory rules for tackling digital depravity, along with penalties for failure.
After what Ms Inman Grant called a “very long” process, the internet industry is due to deliver a fully-fledged framework by March 9.
The sector’s earlier efforts have repeatedly lacked commitment to uncover and eradicate CSEA and pro-terror material.
If Ms Inman Grant is not satisfied the sector’s March manifesto goes far enough, she is likely to move to impose a set of standards.
She told The Telegraph that one way or the other, her expectation was Australia would have the first such regulations in the world “by the end of the year.”
An industry spokeswoman said it was “committed to continuing to work closely with the eSafety commissioner on the finalisation of the codes.”
Ms Inman Grant’s toughest talk was reserved for her former employer – Twitter – and its new owner.
She said she could not see how Mr Musk was making the platform less dangerous.
“Not only did he eviscerate the global trust and safety team, they have removed more than half the public policy people,” she said.
“It’s become a pretty dark place pretty quickly.”
Ms Inman Grant, who was Twitter’s head of public policy and safety for Australia and the broader region from 2014 to 2016, said that until recently the company was “relatively swift” to deal with eSafety complaints.
“But now we are not seeing the same type of rapid turnaround on escalations,” she said.
For example, a “high grade” concern raised in December still hasn’t been addressed.
“That’s very unusual,” she said.
The increased difficulty in getting action followed Twitter’s decision to eliminate both of the public policy contacts eSafety once turned to in Australia, Ms Inman Grant said, as well as the Asia-Pacific lead on trust and safety.
She said she was further troubled by Mr Musk’s decision to terminate contracts with external moderation services.
“So who’s minding the shop when it comes to dealing with these abhorrent kinds of abuse,” she asked.
In November last year, shortly after taking control of Twitter, Mr Musk tweeted that “removing child exploitation is priority #1.”
Ms Inman Grant said there was a possibility that Mr Musk was in fact in the process of cracking down on CSEA material.
“We will see how he engages when he receives this notice,” she said. “I’m definitely open to talking to him.”
The notice served on Google is understood to include questions about what checks, in any, are done to prevent Google Drive being used to store child pornography and whether YouTube’s video recommendations deliver paedophiles videos of undressed kids.
TikTok is believed to be facing scrutiny over claims that deviants are paying young girls to perform sexually suggestive acts on the platform.
While Twitter did not respond to requests for comment, Google spokeswoman Samantha Yorke said “child sexual abuse material has no place on our platforms”. It is identified and removed using scanning technology and artificial intelligence, she said.
TikTok said it takes a zero-tolerance approach to predatory behaviour and the dissemination of CSEA material, with “40,000 safety professionals around the world who develop and enforce our policies, and build processes and technologies to detect, remove or restrict violative content at scale.”
This is the second time eSafety has ordered a group of online giants to provide formal explanations after Apple, Microsoft and Facebook’s owner Meta were hit with legal notices in August last year.
Among the revelations to emerge from the responses was Microsoft’s failure to use detection technology it had developed – which more than 200 other companies employ – to check for CSEA images and videos.
“Microsoft wasn’t even eating its own dog food,” Ms Inman Grant said.
Meanwhile Meta admitted that account holders banned from Facebook are not always banned on sister platform Instagram. Another Meta businesses, WhatsApp conceded that it did not tell Facebook or Instagram when it had booted users for sharing appalling content.
All companies served with notices in August provided responses in time to avoid fines.
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Originally published as Elon Musk accused of failing to stop spread of child sexual exploitation material on Twitter
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