JAKARTA - A regulator in Australia has sent legal papers to Twitter and Google asking them to provide information about their efforts to combat online crimes against children. This also adds to the pressure on other global technology companies.
The action carried out by e-safety commissioners in the country highlights the anti-exploitation practices carried out by Twitter under the ownership of billionaire Elon Musk, who called child protection a top priority while also dismissing more than half of employees since taking over in October last year.
"With Elon Musk declaring sexual abuse of children a top priority, this is an opportunity for him to explain what he really did," e-safety commissioner Julie Inman Grant told Reuters in an interview, referring to several tweets from Musk.
He said it was in Twitter's interest to show that they were acting effectively to eradicate child sexual abuse material, because otherwise advertisers could leave the company.
Notices have been issued to @Twitter, @Google @YouTube, @tiktokaustralia, @Twitch& @discord under the 🇦🇺 @eSafetyOffice Basic Online Safety Expectations. We are examining what they are doing-or not doing-to tackle child sexual exploitation, sexual extortion & harmful algorithms. https://t.co/Ks4Dy0ElHg
— Julie Inman Grant (@tweetinjules) February 22, 2023
Inman Grant, who was previously director of public policy on Twitter until 2016, said the response from a larger tech company, coupled with reports of looser content controls on Twitter since Musk took over, prompting him to take action.
Twitter closed its office in Australia after purchases by Musk so no local representative could give Reuters a response, and requests for comments sent to the company's San Francisco-based email email address were not immediately answered.
In addition to writing a letter to Twitter, the commissioner also sent a letter to Alphabet Inc's Google, YouTube owners and Google Drive file storage units, as well as China's TikTok.
Senior manager of government affairs and public policy Google Samantha Yorke said harassment material had no place on their corporate platform and "we used various industry standard scanning techniques including hash-matching technology and artificial intelligence to identify and remove (sexual abuse of children) that has been uploaded to our services".
TikTok's policy manager for Australia, Jed Horner, said in a statement that the company has a zero-tolerance approach to the spread of harassment material with more than 40,000 security professionals worldwide "developing and enforcing our policies, as well as building processes and technology to detect, remove, or limit mass-violating content".
Under a new law in Australia, e-safety commissioners, an office created to protect internet users, could force internet companies to provide detailed information about the frequency of child exploitation on their platforms and about the actions they take to eradicate it.
Companies that fail to work together face fines of up to 700,000 Australian dollars (IDR 7.2 billion) per day.
Last year, the commissioner sent similar notifications to Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp, and Facebook owner Meta Platforms. After receiving their response, the commissioner called their practice inadequate.
Inman Grant said a joint investigation with the Canadian Center for Child Protection in 2020 found publicly available harassment material on Twitter, which was later reported to Twitter's head of trust and security.
"When it comes to Elon Musk's arrival here, which destroys trust and security teams, as well as cuts local public policy people facing out, and then lets some of the worst players back, there will be a lot of bad guys, with fewer security," Grant said, commenting on the cuts. workers on Twitter, quoted by Reuters.
Although Twitter has shut down its Australian unit, Inman Grant said his office has extra-territorial powers to impose fines on companies overseas, but he hopes public attention will prompt Twitter to work together.
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