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Australia's e safety commissioner has put the big Tech Giants on notice threatening penalties potentially worth tens of millions of dollars if they fail to act on terrorist and violent extremist material legal notices have been issued to Google meta X telegram WhatsApp and Reddit amid a surge in reports of harmful content being spread on the platforms Julie Inman Grant is the esafety commissioner and she joins me now in the studio good morning to you Julie thanks for your time you've issued these six media companies with these um notices what is the content of most concern uh well it runs from a variety of serious terrorist content content that you and our children who are starting to see this content as early as Primary School cannot unsee so beheadings rapes uh murder but there's also things like manifestos or radicalizing material that could um you know range from um Islamic State terrorism to conspiracy theories to misogynistic tropes that can spill into real world harm um targeting women so what are the current safeguards in place at the moment uh for this type of material well it's quite variable right now um the companies are getting together through groups like The Christ Church call and the global internet Forum to counter terrorism to share known um Pro Terror content we've just put some very strong mandatory codes in place to encourage companies to do do more but again it's quite variable so one of the the targets um of these notices is telegram which is the most used platform behind secure messaging for terrorist organization and sharing of content we know that they have a presence in in Dubai and some presence in Europe but we don't know anything about the trust and safety infrastructure in place or the kind of tools and this is precisely what we're trying to get to with these notices you mentioned telegram the can tell us a little bit more about the worst offenders here and what your concerns are uh I mean again we see pylon attacks that are organized offline in the dark on telegram um ostensibly um terrorist attacks being um organized there so it's really the worst of the worst and no government has really been able to take them on and get to those questions they are what we would call a regulation resistant platform so we're under no Illusions um getting the answers that we need from them may be difficult but we will use all the tools in our enforcement toolkit to try and get that information yeah I want to ask you about what you're actually asking them to do but before I do that I noticed that Snapchat isn't on the list why is that uh we we're going exactly where the evidence takes us not only in terms of reports through our online content scheme but through our work with the oecd and Tech against terrorism telegram by far is the largest platform hosting this content YouTube is second and again um we worry about algorithms and sending people down rabbit holes with more extreme content Twitter X is third and fourth and fifth are Facebook and Instagram and we are exploring more around Reddit as well we know that some white supremacist content has radicalized some of the um you know the Hol Germany and the Buffalo attackers so we need to look across the broad spectrum these are very complex notices and as a result we're giving them 49 days rather than um usual 28 yeah talk me through the complexities of the requests here that you're asking these social media Giants what are you asking them to do how are you uh ensuring that they are showing that they're protecting Australians um well we we spend months and months um pouring over all sorts of research including our own evidence through reports um through their transparency reports and we ask very targeted surgical questions whereas you'll see um entities like the the European commission which has the Digital Services act asking um standard questions or that they that they answer periodically we're trying to really make sure that they're not putting spin on things and they're giving us valuable information that we can use to understand whether or not they're doing the very Basics if we identify a range of weaknesses this is where we try and work with the platforms to either voluntarily raise this or to use our codes and mandatory standards um to force compliance do you expect that they'll work with you have you had any response so far from any of them uh we've had responses from uh five out of the six thus far we just issued the formal notices uh yesterday evening um but we gave them 5 days in advance to tell us if there were any reason they didn't think they comply with these and uh we're in contact with most of them yes okay uh 49 days for them to get back to you to show you that they are protecting people on the platforms we know that they have very Deep Pockets these companies what are the penal that could result if they don't comply right well I I mean we've had that experience recently uh with ex excorp and Google Google we found them both in non-compliance with our um our notice around child sexual exploitation material uh Twitter X's was much more egregious so we um find them $610,000 they did not pay the infringement notice um so we are in civil proceedings now it it depends on what the court determines yeah it's interesting is cu $610,000 is a drop in the ocean for what you see Google's bottom line is is there a is there a is there room to up those um well the Online safety act is being um reviewed and looked at so that we can bring some of these the Quantum of penalties in line with not only other domestic Regulators here but also globally but I would also say it's not just regulation that is a driver for these companies Revenue impacts and reputation are very big drivers and um you know you know they don't want to be seen as not trusted or unsafe because that directly translates into advertisers voting with their feet as well as users