eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant says X Corp is failing to protect its users. Photo: eSafety.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has released a new transparency report that shows social media platform X (formerly Twitter), owned by Elon Musk’s X Corp, has significantly eroded protections for the safety of its users.
According to information X Corp was required to hand over to the eSafety Commission, the company has made deep cuts to safety and public policy personnel.
The report says X’s global trust and safety staff have been reduced by a third, including an 80 per cent reduction in the number of safety engineers, since Twitter was acquired by Musk in October 2022.
The company has also informed that the number of moderators it directly employs on the platform has been reduced by more than half, while the number of global public policy staff has also been reduced by almost 80 per cent.
It also said it had reinstated more than 6100 previously banned accounts since the October 2022 acquisition, 194 of which were previously suspended by the platform for hateful conduct violations.
The eSafety Commission understands the figures provided by X Corp relate to accounts in Australia, rather than globally, while international media reports suggest that more than 62,000 previously suspended accounts were reinstated globally.
The eSafety Commissioner said the global number of account reinstatements was significant as international accounts could and did target Australian users.
And while the company has previously given estimates of the reduction in staffing, this is the first time X Corp has given specific figures on where the reductions were made, the report states.
Ms Inman Grant said given the global nature of X’s service, these cuts to key safety and public policy roles had implications for Australian users.
“It’s almost inevitable that any social media platform will become more toxic and less safe for users if you combine significant reductions to safety and local public policy personnel with thousands of account reinstatements of previously banned users,” she said.
“You’re really creating a bit of a perfect storm. A number of these reinstated users were previously banned for online hate.
“If you let the worst offenders back on while at the same time significantly reducing trust and safety personnel whose job it is to protect users from harm, there are clear concerns about the implications for the safety of users.
“We also see from X Corp’s responses to our questions that the reduction in safety staff coincided with slower response times when users reported online hate to the platform.”
Response times to hateful tweets have slowed by 20 per cent since the acquisition and response times to hateful direct messages have slowed by 75 per cent, with users not receiving a response for up to 28 hours.
“We know from that, online abuse is frequently targeted at victims via services’ direct message features, with clear intent to cause harm,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“Loss of local staff in Australia also limits the potential for engaging local communities disproportionately impacted by online hate.
“A recent eSafety study found that First Nations youth are three times more likely to experience hate speech online than their non-Indigenous counterparts.”
In June last year, eSafety issued a legal notice to X Corp under Australia’s Online Safety Act seeking specific information about what Twitter/X was doing to meet the Australian Government’s Basic Online Safety Expectations in relation to online hate and enforce its own hateful-conduct policy. The transparency report summarises the company’s response to those questions.
Last month, eSafety launched civil penalty proceedings against X Corp for its alleged failure to comply with an earlier reporting notice given in February 2023 on how it was meeting the basic online safety expectations in relation to child sexual exploitation and abuse material and activity on Twitter/X.
This followed the issuing of an infringement notice for $610,500 to X Corp in September 2023 for its failure to comply with that notice.
X Corp did not pay the infringement notice and sought judicial review of eSafety’s reliance on the transparency notice and the giving of the service provider notification and the infringement notice.
As a result, eSafety is requesting the judicial review be heard in tandem with the civil penalty proceedings to avoid delays to either process.
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