Australia has issued Google with an official warning and fined Elon Musk’s X (formally Twitter) $610,500 over the handling of child sexual exploitation material.

Issued by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, the two notices relate to the failure to adequately responds to questioning around the detection, removal, and prevention of child sexual abuse material, grooming, and extortion on the sites.

Back in February Julie Inman Grant (Australia’s eSafety Commissioner), issued notices to Twitter, Google, TikTok, Twitch and Discord, and gave them an initial 35 days to answer questions.

Seven months of back and forth have resulted in X failing to provide response to some questions, leaving sections entirely blank, or providing incomplete/inaccurate responses.

One example was, the company didn’t respond to questions about the time it takes to respond to reports of child sexual exploitation, and the tools and technologies used to detect such material.

Ms. Inman Grant said, “That’s quite problematic for a $44 billion platform that still reaches hundreds of millions of people when we’re talking about the most egregious illegal content of child sexual abuse materials.”

X also failed to adequately answer questions surrounding the number of safety and public policy staff still employed following the October 2022 acquisition, and job cuts.

Elon Musk took over Twitter in November, which led to mass layoffs, wiping the company’s 40 person Aussie team, and abandoning the local office.

The global layoffs sparked concern about the company’s ability to fight disinformation, hate speech, and child sexual abuse material.

Working at Twitter from 2014 to 2016, Ms. Inman Grant was responsible for dealing with the single public policy employee in the region, based in Singapore, X’s Australian lawyers, and the company’s San Francisco trust and safety team.

European commissioner Thierry Breton wrote to Elon Musk last week, warning X was spreading illegal content and disinformation related to the Israel-Hamas war and called on him to act quickly.

Google has also been issued a formal warning, over providing multiple generic responses and aggregated information to questions about specific services.

The warning related to a minor number of answers in the 43 questions received as part of the notice, not any failure to address child abuse material, the company claimed.

Google’s director of government affairs and public policy, Lucinda Longcroft, said the company invested heavily in preventing the spread of child abuse material.

“We remain committed to these efforts and collaborating constructively and in good faith with the eSafety Commissioner, government and industry on the shared goal of keeping Australians safer online.”

Ms. Inman Grant said she expected a mature, well-resourced and technically proficient company such as Google to be able to answer the questions sufficiently.

“They told us it would take them four months to six months for them to answer certain questions that the other 11 companies that were less mature and well-resourced were able to provide.”

X now has 28 days in which to pay the penalty, or request the notice withdrawn.

If the company chooses not to pay, the Commissioner can proceed to court with the matter, where there is power to penalise the company up to $780,000 for each day they are out of compliance.