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Telegram intends to appeal the penalty, said company spokesperson.
Australia’s independent online safety regulator has fined Telegram nearly A$1m for delaying to provide its transparency reports for more than five months. The delay “obstructed” the watchdog from doing its job for almost half a year, the organisation claims.
Last March, eSafety – the online watchdog – had asked Telegram, along with Meta, WhatsApp, Google, Reddit and X for transparency reports under the country’s Online Safety Act to measure their regulatory compliance under law.
In particular, Reddit and Telegram were specifically asked about their measures to detect and counter child sexual abuse material (CSAM), terrorist and violent extremist content, as well as the measures the platforms are taking to prevent live streaming of these types of content.
According to eSafety, while other platforms complied with the 6 May deadline set by the regulator, Telegram only responded on 13 October – more than five months after the deadline had passed. As a result, the online messaging platform was found to be non-compliant with the transparency notice and has now been slapped with a A$957,780 infringement notice.
The fine, according to eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant, sends an “important message” to the industry that timely responses are not voluntary.
“If we want accountability from the tech industry we need much greater transparency. These powers give us a look under the hood at just how these platforms are dealing, or not dealing, with a range of serious and egregious online harms which affect Australians,” 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.
“It was open to eSafety to give an infringement notice of a higher amount, but we think this amount reflects the significant delay in Telegram providing eSafety with transparency information while also taking into account the subsequent improvement in Telegram’s engagement after the notice period had ended.”
Telegram now has 28 days to pay the fine, seek an extension or request eSafety to withdraw the infringement notice. If the platform chooses not to pay, the commissioner can seek a civil penalty against the platform in the Australian federal court.
However, a spokesperson for Telegram, Remi Vaughn told SiliconRepublic.com: “Telegram fully responded to all of eSafety’s questions last year, with no outstanding issues.
“The unfair and disproportionate penalty concerns only the response timeframe, and we intend to appeal.”
According to the commissioner, the threat posed by terrorist and extremist material online remains “very real” in Australia.
“The Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) recently raised Australia’s terror threat level to ‘probable’ and has cited the online radicalisation of young people as a key factor driving this heightened threat,” she said.
“Research and observation have shown us that this material can normalise, desensitise and sometimes radicalise – especially the young who are viewing harmful material online that they cannot unsee.
“Surfacing how and where some of these platforms might be failing – and also succeeding – in tackling this content is vital to protect the community and raise safety standards across the industry, especially where this most abhorrent of content is concerned.”
Earlier this month, an online group of neo-Nazis were hit with counter-terrorism sanctions in Australia – the first time an entirely online entity was hit with such sanctions. The group was found to have used encrypted platforms such as Telegram to share radical white supremacist content.
Moreover, around 20pc of the “priority counter-terrorism” cases that the ASIO handled last year involved a young person – some as young as 12 years old.
“In every one of the terrorist attacks, disruptions and suspected terrorist incidents in Australia this year [2024], the alleged perpetrator was a young person,” the ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said late last year.
Last December, Telegram announced that it blocked more than 15.5m groups and channels that violated its terms and services, including those that incited violence, shared CSAM and traded in illegal goods.
Although the platform claims to remove millions of illegal pieces of material from its platform, a report published in October 2024 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime revealed that criminal groups are active on Telegram forums, openly conducting illicit activities with little moderation. It also found that the platform has become an important tool for underground cryptocurrency exchanges, organised crime networks and online gambling rings.
The platform’s CEO Pavel Durov was arrested last August in France for failing to take steps to counter criminal activity on the messaging app. Although out on €5m bail, the case against him is still pending and he is forbidden from leaving France until March 2025.
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Updated, 7:50am, 25 February 2025: This article was updated to include the statement from a Telegram Messenger spokesperson.
