Australia cracks down on Elon Musk, demands Twitter explain surge in harmful posts—or face fines of nearly $500,000 per day

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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has demanded the Elon Musk-owned social media site provide information about what it is doing to curb online hate. The company has been served with a “please explain” notice and given 28 days to comply.

Should it fail to do so, it will face fines of nearly $700,000 AUD ($473,294 in U.S. dollars) for each day it fails to do so following the deadline.

The country’s eSafety division, an independent regulator of online safety, says it has received more complaints about online hatred on Twitter than any other platform in the past 12 months, with a growing number of serious reports since Musk’s takeover last October.

“Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate,” said eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant in a statement. “We are seeing a worrying surge in hate online. eSafety research shows that nearly 1 in 5 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.”

Twitter isn’t the only social media company the eSafety Commission is looking into. In February, it sent notices to TikTok, YouTube, Twitch and Discord, seeking information on the steps those companies are taking to address a slew of issues, including child sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual extortion and the promotion of harmful content by their algorithms.

Twitter, in January, dismissed workers whose job it was to monitor and address hate speech. Observers have noted a 105% surge in antisemitic tweets since he took over and pointed out that hateful comments from people who have paid for Twitter Blue have largely been exempt from having those comments removed.