Australia’s eSafety Commissioner stands firm in face of US demands

For a few weeks, there wasn’t much news about how U.S. Congress has demanded that Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant appear in Washington to testify on charges of censorship, or risk being found in contempt. But Inman Grant continues to deal with the threat from Republican Congressman Jim Jordan, who chairs the the House Judiciary Committee, over Australia landmark Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) act, which prohibits kids under 16 from having social media accounts.

In a report from The Age, the beleaguered commissioner says several legal officials, including the secretary of the Attorney-General, have been “very engaged.”

“This is a very unprecedented request for another legislative body to try and compel a senior bureaucrat from another government doing the job that the government set out for her to do,” Inman Grant says.

But it’s not just political overreach that concerns her. Inman Grant is a dual Australian-American citizen, born in Seattle. Given the current U.S. administration’s punitive policies, she worries she might face charges, or worse.

Policy is a group effort, but media needs lightning rod

Indeed, both U.S. politicians and mainstream media appear to have decided that the eSafety Commissioner is the architect and keeper of Australia’s online safety laws. Time Magazine has named her to its Health 100 for 2026, saying that, while many hands went into crafting Australia’s regulations, “most of the finer detailing and heavy lifting was done by” Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, who “formulated the set of guidelines for what social media companies can and cannot do in her adopted homeland.”

For her part, Inman Grant has tried to explain to Jordan and others that she is “executing the will and the laws of Australia as passed by the parliament.” She sees her role as “interpreting and implementing legislation.”

“But I’m not the creator, obviously not. I can’t carry the water for the parliament or the government, so they decided it really needed to be expanded to be a government-wide engagement.”

Which is to say, Australia is behind its eSafety Commissioner. Prime minister Anthony Albanese has celebrated the social media law and what it has achieved. The government’s Age Assurance Technology Trial has provided some reference data for the wider conversation.

Is this R.I.P. to Web 2.0?

Why, then, is Julie Inman Grant being singled out as a Censorship Monster intent on silencing freedom? Time’s profile nails it. “Inman Grant has changed the tide of the conversation,” it says. “Now that she has demonstrated it’s legally and logistically possible to limit tech companies’ access to young people’s attention, parents in other countries are asking their governments to step up.”

The truth is that losing Australian users under 16 doesn’t matter that much to Silicon Valley’s social media tycoons. But the global ripple effect will – most painfully over the long term, as social media becomes less of a central presence in the lives of teens, and, logically, less integrated into their adult lives later on.

In effect, as the face of Australia’s precedent-setting law, Inman Grant is seen as an existential threat to social media as we know it – the spokesperson for a cultural moment that could very well be a tipping point in our culture’s wider relationship with what was once so cutely dubbed “Web 2.0.”

‘Most egregious forms of online harm imaginable’

Meanwhile, the eSafety Commissioner marches on. Time says “the congressional attention has not dampened her enthusiasm; she’s now turning her focus to the health effects of young people’s interactions with AI.”

Indeed, Inman Grant had the opportunity to make a statement this week during a Senate estimates hearing for Safer Internet Day, and she chose to up the ante. In her speech, which is posted on LinkedIn, she notes that, just last week, “eSafety released a transparency report demonstrating eight of the world’s tech giants are continually failing to prevent all of their platforms and services from being weaponised by predators for online child sexual exploitation and sexual extortion.”

“These are the most egregious forms of online harm imaginable. If there isn’t the will to prevent the sexual abuse of children, what hope do we have for addressing other persistent, or more hidden, harms?” (The question carries extra weight when lobbed in the direction of the current U.S. administration.)

She also celebrates the social media law – linguistically refashioned into a “social media delay” –  as a resounding success that, nonetheless, is still in its infancy. “The social media delay is more than a world-first digital reform, it also signals a major cultural reset. No such reset – whether speed limits, sun and water safety, or smoking – have reached full fruition and impact in two months. There is no precedent for a reform of this scale to take hold that fast.”

“Indeed, we are still in both the earliest and most complex phase of the regulatory process – ensuring companies are effectively deploying their technologies, policies and processes to prevent circumvention of their age assurance systems.”

“But I will reiterate, the first stage of this process, the restriction of 4.7 million social media accounts, cannot be considered anything but a stunning success. To put this in perspective, there are 2.5 million 8- to 15-year-olds in this country. By any standard, that is a good start.”

Inman Grant, then, is not afraid to confirm social media titans’ worst fears. In her role as a shepherd of the law, she is guiding the nation – and the world – into a major cultural reset. In the words of George Harrison, all things must pass. Social media is surely no exception.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  children  |  eSafety Commissioner  |  social media  |  U.S. Government