The eSafety regulator has filed civil proceedings seeking up to A$54.6m, alleging Telegram hosted mass-shooting and Islamic State videos and ignored takedown demands. Telegram says it will fight.
Australia’s online safety regulator has taken Telegram to court, alleging the messaging app left terrorist and violent extremist videos on its platform after being told to remove them.
The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, filed civil penalty proceedings in the Federal Court on 30 July, one of the most aggressive actions yet against the app over illegal content.
The material at the centre of the case is grim. eSafety says Telegram failed to take down footage of the 2022 white-supremacist mass shooting in Buffalo, of the 2019 Christchurch mosque attack, and of Islamic State beheadings, among the most notorious extremist videos on the internet.
The regulator says it gave the company every chance. It began pressing Telegram to comply in March 2024, the filing states, but found the platform “non-responsive for months,” a pattern Inman Grant described as “a permissive hosting environment for terrorist content.”
