Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has given social media platforms 24 hours to remove graphic video and images of the massacre at the Bondi Westfield shopping centre that occurred on Saturday and Monday night’s Sydney church stabbing.
The eSafety commissioner has the power to fine social media companies if they permit the publication of content that she finds objectionable.
She said the action related to material that depicted “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail.”
In the case of the stabbing at the Assyrian Christ the Good Shepherd Church, the service was being live-streamed, and footage of the attack has been circulating online.
People also captured brief videos during the Bondi attack, including shoppers performing CPR on victims, along with photos—one showing the alleged attacker just after he'd been shot by police.
“We expect them to remove this expeditiously,” she told reporters. “We know that every minute counts. And the more of this content [that] is up there, the more that is reached and shared, the more the velocity and the virality continues. And we need to stem that action done by these companies.”
Ms. Inman Grant said her office had already issued a notice to X Corp and would be sending a similar communication to Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) today.
“We have other platforms in our sights as well,” she added.
“While the majority of mainstream social media platforms have engaged with us, I am not satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online.
“That is why I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it.
Ms. Inman Grant explained that her office could use a range of powers to enforce the takedown notice, including civil proceedings in court or issuing fines.
“If they fail to remove the content, then we can go to search engines such as Google or Bing to really minimise the amount of content the Australians can see,” she said.
Asked about messaging apps, a spokesperson for the Commissoner’s office said, “The issue of encrypted apps is complicated, of course, by the nature of encryption, but we would expect those platforms to take whatever reasonable steps are available to them under the Act to suppress the availability of the content on the service.”
Ms. Inman Grant pointed out that in March, her office issued “transparency notices” to social media companies “around terrorist and violent extremist content.” These had been served to a range of platforms including Google, WhatsApp, Telegram, X Corp, Meta, and others.
Meta Removing Content
Meta confirmed it has been removing uploads as of Monday, and had added versions of the material to its database to ensure that it would block people attempting to upload it again in future.“Our priority is to protect people using our services from seeing this horrific content even if bad actors are determined to call attention to it,” a Meta spokesperson said.
“We have taken steps to prevent possible copies of the incident from being re-shared and are in contact with law enforcement and the eSafety commissioner’s office to provide any necessary assistance.”
TikTok said that “within 30 minutes of the tragic news breaking, our trust and safety team were notified and immediately activated our longstanding procedures that relate to managing these types of tragic events.”
X Corp has yet to publicly respond to the notice. It has so far refused to pay a $610,500 (US$388,000) fine imposed by Ms. Inman Grant for failing to respond to questions she sent in February.
New Laws Planned, Budget Quadrupled
The government plans to introduce legislation later this year requiring social media companies to strengthen their policies on “content [that] is false, misleading or deceptive, and where the provision of that content on the service is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.”The introduction of the new law was delayed last year after initial consultation led to claims it would impede free speech online and would not protect religious speech.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland recently announced that annual base funding for the Commissioner’s office would rise by $132.1 million over four years.
“Without intervention, eSafety’s funding would have dropped from $51.8 million to just $21.3 million next year, before declining further to just $10.3 million from 2027-28, severely impacting the regulator’s ability to do its important job,” Ms. Rowland said.
