Canberra, Australia — Australia’s online safety watchdog has issued a legal notice to Twitter seeking an explanation of what the social media giant is doing to tackle a surge in online hate since Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought the platform.
Australia’s E-Safety Commission bills itself as the world’s first government agency dedicated to keeping people safe online. The agency said Thursday it received more complaints about online hate on Twitter than any other platform over the past 12 months, and reports of serious online abuse have also been on the rise since Musk took over the company in October.
The Australian agency’s boss, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, said she sent the San Francisco-based company a notice on Wednesday with 36 detailed questions about how Twitter’s policies about hateful conduct are enforced.
Inman Grant said that if Twitter did not provide factual and truthful answers to all questions within 28 days, an Australian judge could fine the company up to 700,000 Australian dollars ($476,000) for each day of delay.
Inman Grant said, “The whole idea of basic online security requirements is that global companies like Twitter are enforcing their policies … and they have the people and technology to keep their platforms secure.”
“They have a hateful conduct policy that says you can’t directly attack other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, etc., and I’d like to know if basically they’re enforcing this policy And how effectively they’re doing it.” He added.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
The eSafety notice followed Musk’s announcement in November that he was offering an “apology” for the suspended accounts. This led to the reinstatement of 62,000 banned or suspended users on the platform, including 75 accounts with more than 1 million followers, eSafety said in a statement.
Twitter’s global workforce was reduced from 8,000 employees to 1,500 under Musk’s leadership, as well as the trust and security teams were removed. Twitter had furloughed all public policy staff from Australia.
Inman Grant said Indigenous Australians, people with disabilities and people who identify as LGBTQ+ experience online hate at twice the rate of other Australians.
“One third of all reports of online hate in our office are coming from Twitter. Inman Grant told the Australian Broadcasting Corp., “It’s been a huge jump since Elon Musk took over in October ’22.” “
“A lot of the changes in the algorithms have made people feel like you’re seeing more toxicity, a lot more rude discourse. But without lifting the hood and using these transparency powers, we really don’t know what’s going on and that’s where we’re trying to get to the bottom of things,” she said.
Australians are not alone in their increasingly hostile experience with Twitter. US advocacy group GLAAD said last week that all major social media platforms do poorly in protecting LGBTQ+ users from hate speech and harassment. But Twitter was the worst.
In its annual Social Media Safety Index, GLAAD gave Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter low or failing scores, saying the platforms don’t do enough to keep their users safe. That said, most improved from a year ago.
Twitter was the only exception. GLAAD’s scorecard called it “the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ people” and the only platform whose score saw a decline from last year – down from 45% the year before to 33%.
The British rights group Center for Countering Digital Hate found that incidents of racial slurs on Twitter increased soon after Musk bought the company.
The center found that the racial epithet used to attack black people appeared more than 26,000 times in the week following Musk’s takeover – three times the average for 2022.
The center also found that users who pay for Twitter Blue Checks are enjoying some degree of exemption from the platform’s rules on online hate.
Inman Grant is chair of the Global Online Safety Regulators Network, which was formed in November with the British, Irish and Fijian online harm regulators to coordinate on online safety issues. Each of the 27 EU states will soon have their own online harms regulator.
Inman Grant said Australia is discussing sharing information with other national regulators and how they can take joint regulatory action.
“We will work with other governments to make sure we focus on these companies and push them to improve their standards in doing the right thing,” he added.
