Popular messaging app Telegram is fighting a nearly $1 million fine issued by Australia’s online censorship chief for failing to comply with demands to report on how it was combating “violent extremist material”.
Australia’s controversial eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, gave Telegram an infringement notice for $957,780 on February 24 for not answering questions required by a “transparency reporting notice” within its deadline.
Telegram then launched a legal challenge to overturn the fine and recover its legal costs, arguing the company is not a “provider of social-media services or relevant electronic services” under the law, and claiming the March 2024 notice was invalid as it was sent to an incorrect address.
The case was set to be heard in the Federal Court in October, but was pushed back to December after lawyer David Klempfner, acting for Telegram, objected to a delayed “document dump” by eSafety and asked for more time to respond.
In a hearing last Friday, lawyer Philip Solomon, acting for the eSafety Commissioner, said Telegram had expanded its legal case by making additional claims, MLex reported.
“We want to know the case we have to meet. We want a fair opportunity to meet it and, as may be possible, we want to hold the December hearing date,” Mr Solomon told the court.
Judge Chris Horan responded by ordering Telegram to clarify the scope of its case by November 7.
In March last year Ms Inman Grant sent transparency reporting notices to Telegram, Meta, WhatsApp, Google, Reddit and X requiring the companies to answer questions about measures they had in place to combat terrorist and “violent extremist material” on their services.
Telegram and Reddit were also asked about measures relating to child abuse material.
After issuing the fine Ms Inman Grant said: “Telegram took 160 days to provide information that was asked in the reporting notice and providing this information so late has obstructed eSafety from delivering its functions under the Online Safety Act for almost half a year.”
She also justified the fine by referring to ASIO raising the terror threat to “probable”, and citing “the online radicalisation of young people as a key factor driving this heightened threat”.
Since Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested in France in August last year the company has started releasing transparency reports detailing its responses to law enforcement requests, and just days before the fine was issued accounts belonging to Australian nationalists were mass-banned.
According to the latest transparency report for Australia, covering the period between January 1 2025 and September 30, Telegram fulfilled 23 requests for IP addresses and/or phone numbers, affecting 33 users.
In September Ms Inman Grant threatened to fine X $X825,000 per day unless it removed 23 posts containing CCTV footage of the brutal murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska by a black career criminal in the US, sparking global outrage about censorship overreach.
The unelected American-born bureaucrat, who earns a $450,000/year taxpayer-funded salary and previously worked for Microsoft and Twitter, is spearheading the Australian government’s social media age restrictions, which come into effect on December 10.
She is also responsible for bringing in mandatory search engine age checks, coordinated with a shadowy global “advertising cartel” to silence free speech, tried to censor a critic of radical gender ideology in schools, was criticised by Elon Musk for her failed legal attempts to impose a global censorship regime by forcing X to delete videos she claimed were illegal, and last year threatened to fine X $800,000 over a post calling a biological female a woman.
Header image: Left, Julie Inman Grant (eSafety). Right, Pavel Durov (Instagram).
