The woman working to regulate what Australians—and, if she has her way, the entire world—can see on the internet, was once an employee of the company she’s battling in the Federal Court: Twitter, now called X.
U.S. citizen Julie Inman Grant rarely grants long-form interviews, but in 2022 she agreed to talk to the Communications Law Review, which wrote an uncritical piece on the newly reappointed eSafety commissioner.
In it, she revealed that she had studied computer science at university in the United States, but dropped out to study international relations.
She then headed straight for Washington D.C., securing a job in the early 1990s at the intersection of “technology, public policy [and] social justice before there was an internet.”
Could Have Been in the CIA
She also claimed in another interview to have first been offered a position as a case agent with the CIA.
“I wanted to do psychological profiles of serial killers but they wanted to talk me into becoming a case agent—which meant that I wouldn’t be able to tell my friends and family what I was doing so that scared me off,” she said.
Her involvement with technology came when her Congressman came to her, and asked her to look at this “small little company called Microsoft,” which was within his district and dealing with telecommunications industry deregulation.
The soon-to-be tech giant must have liked whatever it was she did for them, as it recruited her to be one of its first lobbyists.
“It was the early 1990s, so tech policy was ground zero, developing the Communications Decency Act in the midst of the anti-trusts trial, meeting Bill Gates on my second day of work and taking him to the White House,” she recalls.
She spent five years in Washington before Microsoft “sent me as far away as they could” to Australia and New Zealand where she set up the company’s Philanthropy, Government Relations, and Industry Affairs programme, which eventually expanded to the entire Asia-Pacific region.
X Showed Her the ‘Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” of Social Media
After 17 years working for the tech company, where she rose to become global director for Safety and Privacy Policy and Outreach, she did some consulting work in Australia before joining what was then Twitter in 2012.“I got to see the good, the bad and the ugly of social media close up,” is her recollection of that time. She then went to software development firm Adobe before being “tapped” to become Australia’s first eSafety commissioner under the previous centre-right Liberal Turnbull government.
She describes her role within these companies as having been “an antagonist, saying ‘Come on ... we’re looking at privacy and security and I get how that leads to customer trust (and hence sales) but what about the personal harms we’re causing to people?’”
“I started as a techno-optimist,” she said, “And I believed that when I started in the industry ... that it would change the world ... But over time I also saw the damage that technology was doing to people.
“I also saw that it’s not entirely the tech companies’ fault.
Commitment ‘Must Come From the Top’
About Twitter, she says “I really enjoyed that time ... and they gave me a lot of latitude to do things ... I ultimately left Twitter because I got to the point where it didn’t feel like I could defend the company any more.“What I’ve certainly learnt is that a commitment to safety and user wellbeing has to come from the top.”
Ms Inman Grant is also chair of the Child Dignity Alliance’s Technical Working Group and a board member of the WePROTECT Global Alliance.
She was named one of Australia’s most influential women by the Australian Financial Review and a “leading Australian in Foreign Affairs” by The Sydney Morning Herald.
In 2020, the World Economic Forum appointed her one of the “Agile50,” the world’s most influential leaders revolutionising government.
She was appointed eSafety commissioner in January 2017, and in January 2022 was reappointed for a further five years. She is a mother of three, who moved to Australia 18 years ago and married a local.
