Elon Musk’s X platform handed $100K penalty in landmark B.C. intimate images case

B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has handed social media giant X a $100,000 penalty in a landmark ruling under the province’s intimate images protection act.

The X platform has been handed a $100,000 penalty for failing to remove an intimate image depicting a transgender B.C. woman—despite an “unambiguous” order to do so—in a landmark decision issued this week.

The case marks the first time the province’s Civil Resolution Tribunal has issued a monetary penalty against a social media company under the Intimate Images Protection Act, designed to help people scrub pictures and videos posted online without their consent.

The law also applies to some doctored images, which this case involved—specifically, an image of the woman altered to depict her head on a masculine body.

Rather than deleting the offending image when told to do so, the platform “geofenced” it so it could no longer be accessed within Canada, according to a Sept. 4 decision by tribunal vice-chair Eric Regehr.

That did not satisfy the terms of the order, Regehr found.

“Part of the ongoing harm of intimate images being on the internet is the simple knowledge that people might see it,” he wrote. “With that in mind, geofencing is really not a solution at all.”

The tribunal gave X, which has been owned by billionaire Elon Musk since 2023, the maximum penalty available under the law.

Speaking to CTV News, the victim, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, added the company’s response meant little when geolocked content can easily be viewed using a virtual private network, or VPN, that obscures an internet user’s location.

“All you have to do is switch over to a U.K. or U.S. server and you have access to all the content in Canada,” she said. “So it doesn’t really help at all.”

X questions B.C.’s authority

A previous tribunal decision describes the image as “relatively benign” devoid of context, but harmful in the manner with which it was shared—by an individual described as an “avowed anti-trans activist.”

That activist, whose identity is also protected, was ordered to pay the victim $7,500.

Following that decision, which is now under judicial review, Regehr granted the victim a protection order requiring the image’s removal from all “internet intermediaries,” including X, in March 2025.

She was responsible for providing X with the order.

Based on email evidence, the tribunal found the company had received it by mid-April, when X responded telling the victim it had geofenced the content.

The company said it complied with the order by doing so.

“X argues that the B.C. legislature’s authority, and by extension the CRT’s authority, ends at B.C.’s borders,” Regehr wrote, summarizing the social media giant’s case.

“X’s argument is essentially that the order to remove the intimate image must be interpreted to only require geofencing. Viewed through that lens, X says it complied.”

Regehr categorized the company’s stance as “in substance, an attack on the constitutionality” of the Intimate Images Protection Act, and noted the tribunal—a quasi-judicial branch of B.C.’s justice system that resolves certain types of complaints through an online process—has no authority to consider constitutional arguments.

“I find that I must proceed on the presumption that the IIPA is constitutional,” the vice-chair added. “In other words, I must presume that I had the authority to make a protection order with global effect.”

Tribunal decisions can be appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court. CTV News has reached out to X to ask whether it intends to do so in this case.

Company’s refusal ‘intentional’

The company emailed the victim saying the image had been geolocked on April 14, according to the decision.

Unhappy with the response, the victim applied for an administrative penalty through the tribunal, which X formally contested on July 16.

Regehr said it wouldn’t be “appropriate or fair” to penalize X after that date, when its non-compliance was in dispute, leaving 92 days in which a penalty could apply.

Given B.C. law allows for penalties of up to $5,000 per day in intimate image cases, that timeframe “comfortably exposes” X to the $100,000 maximum, Regehr wrote.

The vice-chair acknowledged X did not ignore the order, and that geofencing “probably reduced the number of people who have seen the intimate image by some unknowable number,” but called that a minor point in the company’s favour.

“The protection order was unambiguous,” Regehr wrote. “X’s decision not to comply with it can only be seen as intentional.”

Refusing to remove the image, even temporarily as the dispute was being decided, caused the victim unnecessary distress, he added.

Under B.C.’s Intimate Images Protection Act, penalties are paid to the provincial government, not victims themselves. The decision notes X could face another penalty of up to $100,000 if it refuses to pay.

The victim told CTV News she is considering further legal action against X as well.