Australian judge fines X Corp. $465,000 for online safety breach

Key points

• An Australian judge fined X Corp.
• 650,000 Australian dollars (U.S. $465,000) on Thursday (May 21, 2026) for failing to provide information to an online safety watchdog in 2023 about how it tackled child sexual exploitation content.
• Federal Court Justice Michael Wheelahan also ordered the Texas-based social media giant to pay AUD 100,000 ($71,000) of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's court costs within 45 days.
• The ruling ends a three-year legal battle in which X had argued it was not obliged to answer eSafety's questions.
• “X admitted that it contravened Australia's Online Safety Act (OSA) by failing to provide a report that fully answered questions posed by eSafety in a transparency notice issued on February 22, 2023,” the agency's lawyer Christopher Tran said.