Amount comprises $650k pecuniary penalty, $100k cost contribution
Australia’s Federal Court ordered X Corp, which operated the social media service formerly known as Twitter, to pay $650,000 to the Commonwealth of Australia as a pecuniary penalty and $100,000 as a contribution to the eSafety Commissioner’s costs.
This civil penalty proceeding followed Twitter, Inc’s merger into X Corp, the respondent in eSafety Commissioner v X Corp (Civil Penalty) [2026] FCA 629.
On 22 February 2023, the applicant commissioner issued Twitter a non-periodic reporting notice under s 56(2) of the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth).
In response to the notice, the respondent submitted a report to the commissioner. The respondent admitted to breaching s 57, a civil penalty provision of the Online Safety Act, as its report did not follow the manner and form specified in the commissioner’s notice.
The Federal Court of Australia ordered the respondent X Corp to pay:
Under r 2.23(3)(a) of the Federal Court Rules 2011 (Cth), the court ordered that annexures C and D to the parties’ statement of agreed facts and admissions should be confidential. The court clarified that this order would not prevent specified persons from accessing the documents to which it referred.
The court declared that the respondent contravened s 57 of the Online Safety Act because it failed to prepare the report in the required manner and form. Specifically, the court determined that the respondent failed to respond to:
First, the court found the declaration appropriate based on the sufficient factual foundation in the statement of agreed facts and admissions.
The court noted that the Online Safety Act – which aims to improve and promote Australians’ online safety by minimising the prevalence of abusive, violent, or otherwise sensitive material – includes reporting requirements to enforce the basic online safety expectations.
As the large social media platform operator failed to comply with reporting requirements, the court ruled that the commissioner as the relevant regulator served the public interest by pursuing and obtaining a public declaration of contravention, which would help deter similar conduct in the future.
Second, the court found the proposed penalty appropriate. The court accepted that the maximum penalty for the respondent’s contravention of s 57 was $687.5k.
The court explained that the agreed penalty of $650k was close to the maximum, which would serve as a deterrent, not simply as a cost of doing business, for the respondent as a substantial corporation. The court added that the reduction accounted for the applicable mitigating factors.
The court also considered it appropriate that the parties had compromised the question of costs on a global basis, which helped save the parties’ and the court’s resources.
Third, the court found the confidentiality order necessary to prevent prejudice to the proper administration of justice in light of the nature of the information that the respondent wanted to remain confidential.
The court noted that annexures C and D comprised the respondent’s responses to the commissioner’s notice, including detailed confidential information about the respondent’s systems for detecting and preventing the transmission of child sexual exploitation and abuse material on its platform.
The court acknowledged the risk that allowing the inspection of this information might enable actors to comprehend and thus circumvent the detection and prevention systems, which would contradict the Online Safety Act’s purpose of protecting Australians online.
