AINEWS
Australia's eSafety regulator is taking Telegram to court over extremist material allegedly kept online for years, with fines up to A$54.6m (US$38m).
Australia's eSafety Commissioner is taking Telegram to court over video of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shooting and other extremist material that she alleges remained on the messaging platform for years after regulators gave notice (BBC). The civil case targets a single platform, but the legal lever behind it is the first contested test of how Australia plans to police major international platforms without a licensing regime.
The country's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman-Grant, said the action targets Telegram's alleged failure to comply with "basic online safety expectations" under Australia's Online Safety Act. Maximum exposure is a fine of A$54.6m, roughly £28m or US$38m. Inman-Grant said eSafety began asking Telegram about anti-terror and extremist moderation in March 2024 and endured "five very difficult months of unresponsiveness" before the platform engaged. "No platform is above the law," Inman-Grant said, framing the case against the "painful aftermath" of a December attack on a Hanukkah gathering in Bondi, Sydney.
The mechanism matters more than the fine. Australia does not license social media platforms, so eSafety cannot revoke a permission to operate. Instead, the Online Safety Act sets civil-penalty ceilings for platforms that fail to remove specified categories of material, including violent extremist content, after notice. The A$54.6m figure is the maximum under the Act's basic online safety expectations for the relevant period. Telegram is the first major international platform to face that ceiling in a contested case, and one that has historically been less responsive to Western regulators than peers, according to eSafety.
Inman-Grant has a track record of world-first enforcement. Last year she led Australia's ban on social media accounts for users under 16, the first national rule of its kind. The Telegram action extends that posture from age-based access controls to content-moderation duties. The regulator also signalled it can apply for further orders if Telegram does not engage, though the specific remedies available were not detailed in the public filing.
Russian authorities charged him a day earlier with facilitating terrorism, alleging the app was used for recruitment by Ukrainian secret services. He was arrested in France in 2024 and placed under formal investigation for alleged moderation failures, then allowed to return home while that investigation continues. The Australian civil case is a smaller operational risk for Telegram than for most platforms, and a larger reputational one.
A spokesperson called the platform's anti-terrorism efforts "extensive" and "well documented" and said it would contest the case in court. Inman-Grant's reply was that the platform had retained a "permissive environment" where extremist content was "very easy to find" and "sometimes used to plan attacks." She added that extremist content on Telegram "only serves to desensitise, to normalise and to sometimes radicalise" users, allegations the platform will now litigate in a Federal Court filing.
The case will turn on what the Federal Court treats as adequate compliance with the Act's basic online safety expectations, and on whether the five months of unresponsiveness constitute a breach in themselves. Australia's regulator has signalled a workaround for the absence of a licensing regime: maximum civil penalties as a substitute lever. The A$54.6m ceiling is the headline number. The precedent is whether that lever works against a platform that simply declines to engage.