eSafety boss Julie Inman Grant loses her cool online in TikTok spat

Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

If Facebook and Twitter – or X, as we’re now supposed to call it because some billionaire decided to rebrand a perfectly good social media platform – are basically just an online rumpus of bad spelling and snark, then LinkedIn, for all its faults, is more like a golf club bar: all gentility and hushed tones. And civility.

But spectacularly boring. Every day some middle manager announces they’re “today years old” because they learned something the rest of us discovered during the Howard years. They’re always “leveraging” things. Not using them. And worst of all, they call themselves “ninjas”. Digital marketing and growth hacking ninjas. When the closest they’ve ever come to feudal Japan is maybe a Sun Tzu quote or a ride in a Toyota.

But the point is that LinkedIn is meant to be nice. Performatively nice. Which is why coffee was spat across keyboards everywhere when Australia’s eSafety commissioner – Julie Inman Grant, whose job is to stop people being nasty to each other online – had a tremendous little barney with Ronn Bechler. And Bechler’s no troll. He’s a businessman. Sits on the boards of online retailer Kogan and share registry service Automic Group. The sort of chap who, like Inman Grant, would be well familiar with the phrase: let’s take this offline. And that clearly didn’t happen on this occasion.

Here’s what did happen: Inman Grant posted something on LinkedIn about how the eSafety Commission (her office) had heroically pushed Apple and Google to remove a dodgy app that pedophiles were using to groom children. Which is good. We can all agree that’s very good.

But then Bechler piped up – politely, we think – to point out that children were still being absolutely monstered every single day on TikTok, yet “the eSafety Commission”, he said, “does nothing”. Just an observation; fair criticism, no more no less, and it was accompanied by an offer to Inman Grant that, if she wanted, they could discuss the matter; the sort of constructive dialogue for which LinkedIn supposedly exists – between all the ninja nonsense.

But no, Inman Grant wasn’t having it. “Actually,” she said, “we are the only country in the world with a cyber bullying complaint scheme.” Which is a bit like proclaiming excellence for being the sole member of the household who can operate the coffee machine.

Bechler describes what came next as a “personal attack” upon him.

Inman-Grant said: “I suggest you look at this and perhaps in the mirror? (sic) This is a whole of society issue that needs to start with adult role modelling and I look at the tone of your post and wonder why kids aren’t learning about how to frame online commentary that is civil and constructive? (sic)”

Whoa now. This would be the country’s eSafety commissioner telling Bechler that, actually, he’s the problem. And perhaps hinting, not so subtly, that he might be a crap role model. All because he’d dared to suggest her office wasn’t doing enough to police the bullying on TikTok.

Now, look. We all have bad days. We lash out. We pick fights with Elon Musk (as Inman Grant once did, earning her the nickname “Censorship Commissar”) and get destroyed because he’s a soon-to-be-trillionaire with the emotional maturity of a teenage gamer. We’ve all faced, like Inman Grant, the threat of Senate inquiries into the extraordinary powers bestowed upon us, which seem to exist with bugger-all oversight … and then sigh relief as the government saves us with their voting bloc, which is what happened last year.

Did Inman Grant apologise for this aberration? Admit to an over-reaction? Of course not. She blocked Bechler and deleted the whole thing. As if it never happened. And then she reposted it, or so we think, because it’s back online, minus the lost-temper bit – and somehow the post has been backdated to a few weeks ago, when it actually happened five days ago. We know because Bechler kept screenshots. Of course he did. And now Inman Grant kind of does look like a censorship commissar. And when we asked her office about it, we received no response. Which is silly, because all she had to say was “Sorry, I was having a bad day” and everyone would have moved on. But instead, we’re left with the delicious irony that the very person in charge of digital decorum lost her cool and was a bit mean on LinkedIn.

But it’s not too late to fix this. What Inman Grant should do now is what all LinkedIn warriors do after they’ve had a scrap.

She needs to post an excruciating selfie with Bechler where they’re both grinning like idiots, talking about “productive dialogue” and “finding common ground”. Maybe throw in some inspirational quote about how “your network is your net worth”. Then jointly announce that they’ve buried the hatchet and end the post with a moral message. Preferably one that starts with: “Not sure who needs to hear this, but …”

And it should simply say: Be kind.