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Excerpts From a Conversation with Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety Commissioner

Dec 2024 🇦🇺 🌐 Council on Foreign Relations

Suicide and self-harm are complex and never caused by one factor alone. Problematic screen use, cyberbullying, harmful content, and online exploitation may increase risk or intensify existing distress. If someone is in immediate danger or emotional crisis in the United States, call or text 988.

Outside the U.S.? Find your local helpline at findahelpline.com.

The Council on Foreign Relations published edited excerpts of a discussion between Julie Inman Grant and CFR Senior Fellow Linda Robinson on Australia's Online Safety Act and global online-safety efforts. Grant traced eSafety's founding in 2015, after the death by suicide of an Australian celebrity following sustained online trolling, and described its cyberbullying complaints scheme, which she said resolves about 90% of reported cases by getting harmful content removed. She detailed the office's image-based-abuse scheme, noting it disproportionately affects girls and young women, and flagged a sharp rise in financial sextortion targeting young men aged 18 to 24. Grant framed these complaint-and-remediation schemes as tools for correcting a structural power imbalance between large platforms and individual users, paired with prevention, education, and international regulatory partnerships. TechKids Foundation includes this as a detailed, on-record account of the operational schemes behind Australia's youth online-safety framework.

~90% takedown success rate

Inman Grant said eSafety's cyberbullying complaints scheme achieves about a 90% success rate in getting harmful, threatening, or humiliating content removed once reported.

~75% of image-based abuse affects girls

She said roughly three-quarters of reported image-based abuse, including deepfakes, affects girls and women, describing it as a gendered pattern similar to child sexual abuse material.

1,300% rise in financial sextortion (ages 18–24)

Inman Grant cited a 1,300% increase in financial sexual extortion cases targeting young men aged 18 to 24.

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CITATION

Robinson, Linda (moderator), and Julie Inman Grant. "Excerpts From a Conversation with Julie Inman Grant, Australia's eSafety Commissioner." Council on Foreign Relations, December 20, 2024. https://www.cfr.org/articles/excerpts-conversation-julie-inman-grant-australias-esafety-commissioner

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