What inquiry revealed about social media giants and online 'Jew hatred'

It was gloves-off at the royal commission on antisemitism this week, with Elon Musk's X bearing the brunt of the inquiry's frustrations with obstructive social media giants.

For the past two weeks, the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has been examining the way social media platforms detect and respond to what has been described as a "cesspool of Jew hatred" online.

Meta, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn were among those who fronted the commission, but others such as X were glaringly absent.

The inquiry heard multiple attempts had been made to contact X in May and June, with a notice to produce documents sent to Australian-based solicitors who had previously represented the platform in other matters.

But by the last day of the hearing block, counsel assisting Richard Lancaster SC had had enough.

"Although an apparent proponent of unrestrained speech, X has remained silent," he said.

The comments were part of a 20-minute address to the commission in which Mr Lancaster singled out X and Telegram for their complete refusal to engage with the work of the commission.

Mr Lancaster said evidence from expert witnesses and victims of online hate showed X was a "key perpetrator in the proliferation of antisemitic hate in the online environment".

He revisited evidence given by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant that X fought a decision to prohibit publication of a video showing victims in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi Beach terror attack.

Mr Lancaster said X had argued "notorious depictions of historic and political significance are available online" and included "page after page of images of the Holocaust" in its submission appealing that decision.

"It was extraordinary of X to deploy those images,"

he said.

"In my submission, they give no support to a contention that a video made in 2025 showing some of the deceased after the Bondi Hanukkah attack should be permitted to be shown online, and the use of Holocaust imagery in that context should be unequivocally condemned.

"X Corp's conduct, both within this commission and outside of it, begs the question whether X has, or ought to have, a social licence to operate in Australia."

Enforcement and regulation

Appearing via video link earlier in the week, Meta escaped Mr Lancaster's spray on Friday.

But during his appearance, Meta policy boss Benjamin Good was repeatedly pressed by Commissioner Virginia Bell as he defended the platform's hateful conduct rules and the move to a more reactive model of policy enforcement.

"I understand, Mr Good, that it is not your intention that violating conduct remain on the platform, but the reactive approach necessarily can never achieve the gold standard, can it, since the content is up and available for people to see before a user reports it and Meta moves to remove it," Ms Bell put to Mr Good.

"The gold standard, of course, would be to remove every single piece of violating content before anyone ever sees it,"

Mr Good said.

"But I'll add that that would also include never over-enforcing against content. That would be perfect enforcement."

One of the most significant moments of the week's hearings came during YouTube Australia's appearance at the commission, where the video platform defended its decision to allow content that accused terror attack victim Arsen Ostrovsky of being a false flag actor.

Mr Lancaster was scathing in his assessment of that decision on Friday, saying the content could not "on any rational reading of YouTube's own community guidelines be regarded as anything other than violating" those policies.

"The fact that such a position could be taken by a large and reputable platform in the context of this commission does speak to the urgency of appropriate regulation of social media platforms," he said.

'They have very different values to us'

Anne Kruger, a lecturer in the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland, said the approach of the social media platforms at the commission this week had been "quite telling".

"We're quite powerless and we just aren't doing enough to incentivise these social media platforms to do what's right for us online,"

she said.

"We are working within systems that are run by and designed in America … they actually have very different values to us."

Public servant Delia Rickard's review into the Online Safety Act in 2021 recommended requiring major platforms to maintain a physical branch presence in Australia to facilitate regulatory enforcement.

Some witnesses to the commission have referred to this yet-to-be-implemented Rickard review recommendation.

Dr Kruger hoped the lacklustre response from some platforms at the commission would act as a "springboard" forgreater accountability.

She referenced her time as a subcommittee board member for Australia's first misinformation and disinformation regulatory code of practice, and the challenges the team had in compelling X to act on a complaint in 2023.

The complaint stemmed from X having removed a function on its platform that allowed users to report posts as misinformation or disinformation for X staff to investigate.

"There was no-one in Australia that we could directly deal with [from X]," she said.

"X was removed from the code and there was no other action available under the code or in Australia's powers to the non-response."

Securing accountability

The difficulties faced by the commission point ahead to the challenge of crafting recommendations that could effectively hold social media giants accountable for their responsibility to protect billions of users from online harm.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr Lancaster said consideration should be given to whether the eSafety commissioner or other regulatory body should be given "greater powers to regulate the operations of all social media platforms".

"If social media platforms are capable of inflicting harm, or are actually inflicting harm upon Australians, the laws of Australia must be capable of securing accountability for those harms," he said.

"Regulatory obligations must be imposed on them because they are not taking care of the problem themselves."

The commission will next week move to Melbourne, where it will examine the prevalence of antisemitism in the university sector, before looking at security arrangements for the Jewish community.

Hearings will return to Sydney at the end of July, when the commission will explore the ways in which government agencies and institutions could counteract and prevent manifestations of antisemitism.