SYDNEY, Australia – An Australian court upheld a regulator’s fine against Elon Musk’s social media company X Corp after it admitted violating the law by failing to provide information about its online child protection measures, ending a nearly three-year dispute.

After the eSafety regulator, a frequent target of online attacks by Musk, fined the company in October 2023 for what it called an inadequate response to a standard request for information about anti-child exploitation processes, the company resolved the dispute on Thursday by admitting wrongdoing.

“The respondent admits that it contravened the Act,” Christopher Tran, a lawyer for the eSafety Commissioner, said during a Federal Court hearing, referring to Australia’s Online Safety Act.

“There was ongoing noncompliance for some 38 days.”

The resolution ends a legal battle that began when the regulator fined the company formerly known as Twitter A$610,500 ($437,000) over its answers to around 25 questions. X Corp initially sought to overturn the penalty on the grounds that the company had changed its name after Musk acquired it for $44 billion in 2022.

The regulator later launched a separate legal action to recover the fine. On Thursday, Judge Michael Wheelahan increased the payout to A$650,000 and ordered X to pay another A$100,000 to cover part of the regulator’s legal costs.

The resolution settles a lingering issue for the company, which earlier this year was folded into Musk’s broader technology conglomerate SpaceX ahead of a planned trillion-dollar initial public offering expected within weeks.

X lawyer Perry Herzfeld said the dispute centered on “historic issues relating to the timeliness of provision of information.”

The conduct in question took place during a “period of change and transition for the company,” he told the court.

Tran, representing eSafety, acknowledged there was no direct harm resulting from X’s actions but said that “not providing information when requested by a regulator impedes a regulator when doing her work.” – Rappler.com