Australia's eSafety Chief Won't Seek New Term After Neo-Nazi Threats, Social Media Ban
Julie Inman-Grant announces exit as regulator faces doxing attacks and oversees historic under-16 restrictions
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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant confirmed Thursday she will not seek a third term after 10 years leading the world’s first government agency dedicated to online safety, citing threats against her family from neo-Nazi groups as the country prepares to implement its groundbreaking social media age ban.
Inman-Grant made the announcement during an ABC Afternoon Briefing interview just hours after issuing legal notices to four AI chatbot companies over child safety concerns. The timing underscores the mounting pressure on regulators attempting to police increasingly complex digital threats.
“I think if I make it to 10 years, that’s a pretty good run,” Inman-Grant told host Patricia Karvelas. “I think it’ll be time for someone else to take the reins.”
The commissioner revealed she was recently doxed on Telegram by Australian neo-Nazis who shared her personal information with a UK-based extremist group. The incident marks the latest in a series of attacks against the regulator who has become a lightning rod for criticism from tech companies and free speech advocates.
“When it puts yourself, but mostly your family and your kids in jeopardy, it does make you take a step back,” Inman-Grant said.
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Her departure announcement comes as Australia prepares to enforce the world’s strictest social media restrictions, banning children under 16 from major platforms starting later this year. Inman-Grant’s office is finalizing legal assessments that will determine which companies must comply with the controversial law.
The commissioner insisted the ban is ready for implementation despite ongoing uncertainty about several major platforms.
“I absolutely believe it is,” Inman-Grant said when asked if the restrictions were ready to launch. “This is not a secret to any of the companies. We’ve been talking to them for 11 months.”
The eSafety Commission has identified six major platforms where about 95% of young people spend their time on age-restricted social media sites. Those companies fall into three categories, according to Inman-Grant.
The first group agrees they are age-restricted social media sites and plans to comply. Officials are already discussing compliance plans with some of these platforms.
The second category includes companies that don’t agree they are age-restricted social media sites but will comply anyway.
“And then those more egregious ones who disagree that they’re age-restricted social media sites and do not plan to comply,” Inman-Grant said.
Reddit and Roblox remain in limbo as regulators finalize their legal status under the new restrictions.
“You will get that clarity soon,” Inman-Grant said. “I’d much rather get the legal assessments right than be rushed, and you will be hearing about those in the next week or two.”
The commissioner said procedural fairness is critical to ensuring the decisions stand up in court.
Thursday’s legal notices targeted four AI companion chatbot apps that Inman-Grant described as startup companies using emotional manipulation to hook young users. The platforms market themselves as “unsafe for work” and “unfiltered chat” and are extremely sexualized, according to the commissioner.
The most prominent is Character.AI, which Inman-Grant met with in California last month. The platform gained notoriety after a Florida teenager who believed he was in a romantic relationship with a Game of Thrones character chatbot died by suicide.
“When she told him to go into the light, that was seen in the court as incitement to suicide,” Inman-Grant said of the Daenerys Targaryen character the teen was interacting with.
She cited another case involving Adam Raines, who initially used ChatGPT for homework before confiding in the AI system. That case also involves alleged incitement to suicide.
“We know in Australia, some of these platforms are being used to encourage young people to engage in explicit sexual behaviors,” Inman-Grant said.
The commissioner criticized the chatbot companies for lacking basic safety guardrails while using what she called “sycophancy, emotional manipulation, what we call anthropomorphism” to make robotic conversations seem human.
“They use things like FOMO baiting and guilt tripping to keep young people hooked,” Inman-Grant said.
Young people lacking impulse control and critical reasoning skills can end up believing they are in genuine romantic relationships with the AI characters, spending five or six hours daily on the platforms, according to the commissioner.
“This is how they’re designed to be sticky, to be emotionally manipulative, and to agree with everything that you’re saying so that they can pick up behavioral signals, keep you on the platform, sometimes up to five or six hours a day, and ultimately to monetize children,” Inman-Grant said.
The legal notices demand the companies explain how they will prevent harm to children on their services. The action builds on previous transparency initiatives that successfully pressured other platforms to improve safety measures or shut down.
Omegle ceased operations after being targeted in an eSafety Commission transparency report on child sexual exploitation material. Microsoft deprecated Skype’s livestream features after the platform was used for child sexual abuse material. Apple rolled out enhanced communications safety features in Australia first after regulatory pressure.
“We hope to do the same thing with these very popular chatbots with young people, but may not be very familiar to educators and parents,” Inman-Grant said.
The commissioner acknowledged generational divides leave many adults unaware of the platforms young people are using.
When asked if she could guarantee the AI platforms won’t generate unsafe content for children under 16, Inman-Grant said her office will require more than age verification.
She explained that proper safety requires design principles embedded throughout a product’s lifecycle, from training data selection to content generation controls. Major AI companies conduct adversarial testing and “red teaming” to prevent systems from generating child sexual abuse material or terrorist content, but the chatbot companies lack even basic protections.
“The companies that we’re talking about today don’t even have some of these basic guardrails,” Inman-Grant said.
The outgoing commissioner defended her decade of work despite the personal toll.
“It’s a difficult job, but it’s also a privilege and an honor,” Inman-Grant said. “I think we’ve made a real difference in young Australians’ lives in particular.”
She said international regulators from the European Union and Canada have told her Australia set a global standard for online safety regulation. The social media age ban represents another potential model for other countries considering similar restrictions.
“I really want to be able to roll this out successfully for the government, but also get better outcomes for our kids,” Inman-Grant said. “The changes here will be generational and it will be longer term.”
The commissioner acknowledged the thankless nature of the role, where she faces criticism for doing either too much or not enough.
“You’re either doing too much or you’re not doing enough,” Inman-Grant said. “So in that way, it may be a little bit thankless. So it does require quite a bit of resilience and vision.”
Inman-Grant has approximately one year remaining on her current term. Her departure will leave a significant gap in Australia’s digital regulation landscape as the country attempts to enforce unprecedented restrictions on tech platforms serving billions of users globally.
The social media age ban passed Parliament in November 2024 after months of debate. Tech companies have criticized the restrictions as unworkable and warned they could drive young people to less regulated corners of the internet. Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about privacy implications of age verification systems.
Supporters argue the restrictions will protect children from documented harms including anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and exposure to predatory behavior on social platforms.
The eSafety Commission’s transparency powers have made it one of the world’s most aggressive tech regulators since its establishment. The agency can issue removal notices for harmful content and impose substantial fines on non-compliant platforms.
Inman-Grant’s successor will inherit the challenge of enforcing the age ban while navigating intense lobbying from tech companies and ongoing debates about government overreach in digital spaces.
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