{"id":337888,"date":"2025-12-09T20:37:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/337888\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T20:37:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:37:10","slug":"doxing-death-threats-and-the-ire-of-elon-musk-who-is-the-australian-woman-taking-on-the-social-media-giants-social-media-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/337888\/","title":{"rendered":"Doxing, death threats and the ire of Elon Musk: who is the Australian woman taking on the social media giants? | Social media ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Julie Inman Grant\u2019s address to Australia\u2019s National Press Club in June, her opening words \u2013 an off-the-cuff response to the club\u2019s social media presence on X<\/a> \u2013 were among her most telling. With her ability to perform on a podium, her poise and shining smartwatch, she told the audience as she took to the mic: \u201cAs you can imagine, my biggest fanbase is on X.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the joshing was the truth: the platform\u2019s owner, Elon Musk, has made life hard for Australia\u2019s eSafety commissioner<\/a> over the past 18 months or so. But while she might not have his power or his budget or his global megaphone, she does have an audacious goal \u2013 and it\u2019s a goal Musk has inadvertently helped spotlight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile the tech industry moves backwards, we must move forwards,\u201d the US-born Australian citizen told the audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeking to create some friction [in the] system to protect children where previously there has been close to none \u2026 We are treating big tech like the extractive industry it has become.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Australia\u2019s under-16s social media ban<\/a> is the first of its kind and, as Inman Grant said, \u201cthe stakes are high \u2013 we know the world\u2019s eyes are upon us\u201d. From 10 December, it will prevent under-16s from accessing Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch and X \u2013 although how it will look, even at this late stage, is still not entirely clear.<\/p>\n

To the commissioner, there is no \u201cfair fight\u201d between children and social media algorithms and the statistics paint a grim picture: eSafety research found seven in 10 children aged 10 to 15 had encountered content associated with harm online. Three-quarters of those had most recently encountered that content \u2013 including misogyny, violence, disordered eating and suicide \u2013 on a social media platform.<\/p>\n

\"eSafetyeSafety commissioner questioned on Roblox and social media ban after Guardian investigation \u2013 video<\/p>\n

It might also be said there is no fair fight between her own stand versus the tech megaliths. Their influence is so creeping, their entanglement in daily life so deep, that there seems to be no equivalent recent precedent. Seatbelts in cars, electricity safety switches, even curbing the massive machine of big tobacco \u2013 none seems to capture the same opaquely monetised might of social media.<\/p>\n

In this fight Inman Grant has succeeded in creating friction. So much, in fact, that the woman the US administration says is tasked with protecting Australians from \u201cthe alleged dangers of so-called \u2018online harm\u2019\u201d, was asked to testify to Congress, which she declined, about her attempt to \u201csilence American speech\u201d by \u201ccolluding\u201d with the Global Alliance for Responsible Media [Garm] to \u201ccensor\u201d the platform then known as Twitter.<\/p>\n

A 2022 email produced for congressman Jim Jordan\u2019s interim report<\/a> on the topic told conservatives all they needed to know about her allegiance, with Inman Grant telling Rob Rakowitz from Garm, \u201cAmerica is not the country of promise I grew up in\u201d, and, with a smiley emoji attached: \u201cMove to Australia!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

As the enthusiastic adoptee has said herself, she is answerable to the Australian parliament, not the US Congress. And, as someone who worked for the firm when it was known as Twitter, she knows what social media companies can do to protect their users \u2013 and why they have chosen not to do it.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

From the age of five, Inman Grant and her sister were raised in Seattle by their single mother, a time she credits with fostering her independence<\/a> and resilience. Her mother worked for the City of Seattle, where serial killer Ted Bundy was a colleague, Inman Grant told Time magazine<\/a>. But the city is better known for being a tech cradle and, after working in the 102nd Congress, Inman Grant went on to work for Microsoft, which has been headquartered in Seattle \u2013 also the birthplace of Amazon \u2013 since 1979.<\/p>\n

Twenty-six years ago, she was posted to Australia with the company. She married Australian businessman Nick Grant in the early 2000s and in 2012 moved permanently to Australia. In the early 2010s, she worked for Adobe and then for Twitter for two years, establishing its policy, safety and philanthropy programs in Australia, New Zealand and south-east Asia.<\/p>\n

In 2017, she became eSafety commissioner under prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, four years later becoming responsible for enforcing the world-first Online Safety Act 2021.<\/p>\n

I took this role nine years ago because I felt passionate about online safetyInman Grant<\/p>\n

As she helps shepherd in Wednesday\u2019s social media ban, she wants people to \u201cswim between the digital flags,\u201d a reference to the water safety mantra that has become second nature on Australian beaches. She may use local metaphors to help drive her points home, but growing up in the US, the former communications minister Paul Fletcher says, is \u201cnot unhelpful\u201d when dealing with US media and moguls.<\/p>\n

In Australia, her background might have unfairly worked against her, says her predecessor, Alastair MacGibbon \u2013 despite her being \u201cone of the best types\u201d of Australians in that she chose to be here. Their 20-year association got off to what he calls a \u201creally robust\u201d start when she was in a regulatory affairs role at Microsoft, focusing on preventing child exploitation, and he was in the police force.<\/p>\n

They moved on from those clashes and he knows her to be tough, strong, smart and motivated, with advocacy seemingly coming naturally to her. Plus, she is \u201ca nice, agreeable human being, which is, frankly, not always so common in those roles.\u201d But it\u2019s her understanding of the DNA of the likes of X that drives her, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe knows how to solve this. She knows what these companies can actually do in terms of goodness if they turned their minds to it. She knows the people in those organisations that could do it, and she knows why they could, and she knows how they aren\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inman Grant told Guardian Australia\u2019s Full Story podcast<\/a> \u201cI took this role nine years ago because I felt passionate about online safety. And, I tried to be an internal antagonist within three major technology companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe as adults struggle sometimes to fight against these invisible forces,\u201d she says of the deceptive design features including Snap streaks, auto play and opaque algorithms. \u201cWhat chance do our children have?\u201d<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

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Inman Grant never expected to become a public figure, but challenging the online zeitgeist was always going to put her in an exposed position.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s been frankly courageous,\u201d said Fletcher. \u201cIt\u2019s a job that comes with some real pressures, and she has been subject to some fairly nasty personal criticism.\u201d The experience gives her \u201ceven greater empathy\u201d for people in a similar position online, he says.<\/p>\n

She has been explicit about the threats she has received, with a Columbia University report<\/a> finding tens of thousands of instances of abusive content \u2013 including rape and death threats \u2013 had been directed towards her and her family. \u201cTargeted harassment\u201d towards Inman Grant included 73,694 total mentions of her name or role on X on 23 April 2024 alone \u2013 the majority of which were negative.<\/p>\n

Inman Grant speaks to the media at Parliament House with communications minister Anika Wells. Photograph: Hilary Wardhaugh\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Elon Musk took exception to her power last year when she attempted to have graphic footage of a church stabbing in Sydney removed from X<\/a>. At one point, X had seven ongoing legal matters<\/a> related to notices issued by the commissioner.<\/p>\n

Musk called her a \u201ccensorship commissar\u201d<\/a> and an \u201cunelected bureaucrat\u201d<\/a> \u2013 labels she calls \u201cmisinformation we haven\u2019t been able to shake\u201d.<\/p>\n

She hit back in February this year after then newly re-elected US president Donald Trump appointed Musk to head the Department of Government Efficiency when she told a Tech Policy Design Institute event<\/a>, \u201cLook who is the unelected American bureaucrat now\u201d. It was a small win, perhaps, given \u201cthe largest megaphone in history\u201d had been shooting \u201cunrelenting waves of vitriol\u201d her way.<\/p>\n

It has ramped up an already difficult job which, as she described in one ABC interview, as \u201cvery bruising\u201d and \u201ca little bit thankless\u201d. She has been doxed, including by neo-Nazi groups on Telegram, putting her family and teen children in jeopardy.<\/p>\n

\"EzraEzra is a teen quadriplegic. He says Australia\u2019s social media ban will make him lonelier \u2013 video<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen your kids start being targeted and you start getting credible death threats and the police need to escort you into things and you have to walk into your office in different ways and change the way you live and carry yourself, that comes at a real cost,\u201d she told Full Story.<\/p>\n

Yet her children have been the way into, if not a subject of, much of her advocacy for the ban. In a November LinkedIn post, she described having a \u201cunique laboratory\u201d for insight into parents\u2019 struggles with children and tech.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith three teens at home, I too occasionally get an earful about what they all think about the impending social media delay\u201d, she wrote. She has spoken as a parent who has felt the \u201cvery effective reverse peer pressure\u201d of social media platforms. And she recently told the Senate how each of her children is having a different reaction to the ban.<\/p>\n

She described one as wishing there had a been a ban for them, another as saying \u201cgood riddance\u201d to social media, and the third as \u201creally struggling\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe sees [social media] as a really key way that she engages with her friends and understands what\u2019s happening. So every child is going to be different. And I think, as parents or carers, we really need to be weighing in.\u201d<\/p>\n

So like most parents from today, Inman Grant will be feeling her way through. It seems she will be doing the same as eSafety commissioner \u2013 she\u2019s expecting some \u201cbumps and hiccups\u201d and knows the ban will provide no fix or instantaneous change.<\/p>\n

There is, as she told Full Story podcast, \u201cno playbook for this\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Julie Inman Grant\u2019s address to Australia\u2019s National Press Club in June, her opening words \u2013 an off-the-cuff…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-337888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}