When the social media site X was told to take down cyber abuse by Australia’s internet regulator, it passed on the notice to the user who posted the alleged abuse – which led to its target facing more online bullying.
On 22 March, eSafety sent a notice to X, formerly Twitter, requesting that a tweet from 29 February posted by a prominent anti-trans user about an Australian trans man who is a leading LGBTQ+ health expert be taken down.
The regulator said it should be removed on the grounds it was in breach of Australia’s online safety act. It was determined to be cyber abuse directed at an Australian adult, given it was found to misgender him, mock his gender identity and equated transgender identity with a psychiatric condition.
The user who posted the tweet in question shared the letter on his account to his over 400,000 followers and said in the replies that he had received a copy of the letter from X.
The first tweet in the thread has had over 2m impressions, according to X’s metrics, with some of the nearly 1,000 replies targeting the person who complained to eSafety about the tweet.
On 30 March, X’s global government affairs account confirmed it was blocking access to the tweet in Australia and would fight the notice.
“X is withholding the post in Australia in compliance with the order but intends to file a legal challenge to the order to protect its user’s right to free speech.”
The same user later posted a screenshot of the original tweet from the takedown letter, and that screenshot has not been removed from access in Australia.
A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said the type of content falling under the online abuse scheme must be both intended to cause serious harm and menacing, harassing or offensive in all circumstances.
“If the material only meets one of these two criteria, for example, if the post is offensive but is found to not be intended to cause serious harm, it will not be considered adult cyber abuse under the act,” the spokesperson said.
“Importantly, the adult cyber abuse scheme does not regulate hurt feelings, purely reputational damage, bad online reviews, strong opinions or banter.”
No fine has yet been issued and eSafety had not received any legal notices from X related to the notice since announcing it was planning legal action, Guardian Australia understands.
Under the adult cyberbullying scheme that was passed into law under the former Coalition government in 2021, platforms such as X can be fined close to $800,000 for failing to remove posts within 24 hours of the notice being received.
Such formal notices are rarely issued, and not limited to X. In the past two financial years, eSafety reported it had issued five such formal notices to platforms.
In the 2022-2023 financial year alone, the regulator said it had received 2,644 complaints from adults regarding cyber abuse and made 601 informal requests to platforms seeking the removal of such material, with 466 of these cases resulting in material being removed.
David Sharaz, the partner of former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins used the scheme in 2022 to get a tweet taken down targeting both he and Higgins, Guardian Australia reported last year. This occurred prior to Elon Musk purchasing the platform in November 2022.
While X has vowed to fight the notice to protect the user’s free speech and fight the removal, users last month noticed that using “cisgender” in some tweets results in the platform reducing the visibility of that tweet, claiming it is in violation of the platform’s hateful conduct policy.
Musk tweeted last year that cisgender, a 30-year-old term to describe someone whose gender corresponds to their sex assigned at birth, as “a heterosexual slur”, despite the term also being applicable to non-heterosexual people. “Cis” is derived from Latin, meaning “on this side of”, as in the opposite of trans.
Guardian Australia sought comment from X. The platform last year lodged a case in the federal court appealing a $610,000 eSafety fine notice issued to the company over how it tackles online child safety abuse. Esafety has also lodged a case in the court over X’s failure to pay the fine. The case has yet to be heard.
