eSafety issues legal notice to Twitter over online hate handling
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has used legal powers to demand information from Twitter about what the company is doing to tackle online hate on the social media platform.
The government body, led by Julie Inman Grant, said it has received more complaints about online hate on Twitter in the past 12 months than any other platform, with more reports of serious online abuse since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company last year.
Twitter would risk facing maximum financial penalties of nearly $700,000 a day for continuing breaches if the company does not respond to the notice within 28 days.
eSafety said the rise in complaints also coincided with the company’s much smaller workforce from 8000 employees globally to the current 1500 – with cuts from its trust and safety teams – as well as the company ending its public policy presence in Australia.
The Commissioner also cited Elon Musk’s ‘general amnesty’ in November 2022 that saw some 62,000 banned or suspended users reinstated to the platform, including 75 accounts with over 1 million followers.
Inman Grant said Twitter’s terms of use and policies currently prohibit hateful conduct on the platform, but rising complaints to eSafety and reports of this content remaining publicly visible on the platform, show that Twitter is not likely to be enforcing its own rules.
“We are seeing a worrying surge in hate online,” she said. “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,” Grant said.
“Twitter appears to have dropped the ball on tackling hate. A third of all complaints about online hate reported to us are now happening on Twitter.
“We are also aware of reports that the reinstatement of some of these previously banned accounts has emboldened extreme polarisers, peddlers of outrage and hate, including neo-Nazis both in Australia and overseas.”
eSafety also cited concerns with Twitter flagged by other groups, specifically on the increase in hate targeting marginalised communities.
US advocacy group GLAAD designated Twitter as the most hateful platform towards the LGBTQ+ community, while the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found slurs against African Americans doubled after Musk’s takeover. The CCDH also found paying Twitter users appeared to enjoy a level of impunity when it came to the enforcement of Twitter’s rules governing online hate. The Anti-Defamation League meanwhile found antisemitic posts referring to Jews or Judaism soared more than 61% two weeks after Musk acquired Twitter.
“We need accountability from these platforms and action to protect their users and you cannot have accountability without transparency and that’s what legal notices like this one are designed to achieve,” Grant said.
eSafety previously issued a different legal notice in February to Twitter – along with TikTok, Google YouTube, Twitch and Discord – demanding information on how the company is addressing child sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual extortion and the promotion of harmful content by its algorithms. The government body is assessing the responses and expects to release appropriate information “in due course”.
The government body’s regulatory powers under the Online Safety Act covers serious adult online abuse as well as the cyberbullying of children and image-based abuse. In some cases, hate speech may meet the statutory thresholds of adult cyber abuse.
Like Elon Musk gives a crap about a sub $20 million dollar market threatening to fine it $750k a day if it doesn’t comply.
And if anything, his blue tick subscription model that prioritises and de-anonymises users by associating them with a credit card, means that hate speech will go down, and likely has.
An increase in complaints =/= increase in hate speech.
Just means an increase in complaints from a far-left audience, on a platform with right leaning ownership.
See ya Twitter.
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