Australia's eSafety Commissioner has imposed a $610,500 fine on Twitter's rebranded entity, ‘X’, for failing to meet child protection standards.

The Commissioner's action is part of a report investigating tech giants' compliance with child safety regulations, which found several companies falling short of their responsibilities in combatting child sexual exploitation.

In February, eSafety issued legal notices to Twitter/X, Google, TikTok, Twitch, and Discord under Australia's Online Safety Act, seeking answers about their measures to address child sexual exploitation. 

The new report underscores significant shortcomings in detecting, removing, and preventing child sexual abuse material and grooming. It also reveals inconsistencies in how companies handle this content across their services and varying response times to public reports.

Julie Inman Grant, eSafety Commissioner, says there is a growing problem of online child sexual exploitation both in Australia and globally, and that technology companies have a moral obligation to protect children from such abuse on their platforms. 

The new report indicates that Google and Twitter/X did not comply with the issued notices. 

Google received a formal warning for providing generic responses and aggregated information instead of specific answers to questions. 

In contrast, Twitter/X's non-compliance was more severe, as it left some sections blank, provided incomplete or inaccurate responses, and failed to address crucial questions regarding response times, detection methods, and staff numbers following an acquisition.

The fine imposed on Twitter/X can be withdrawn if paid within 28 days; otherwise, eSafety has the option to pursue further legal action. 

The report also found that certain platforms are not effectively detecting child sexual exploitation in livestreams, and the use of language analysis technology to identify such activities varies across companies. 

Additionally, Google and Discord were found to be not blocking links to known child sexual exploitation material, despite available databases.

The full report is accessible here.