X Corp has been ordered to take down videos of an alleged Sydney stabbing incident until a full court hearing can take place tomorrow.
Lead image: Elon Musk mocks Australia’s PM on X, claiming Anthony Albanese he has been ‘advertising’ the social media platform. Albanese said Musk could not lecture Australians about free speech.
Elon Musk has stoked a war of words with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over a dispute about whether X should remove videos of an alleged stabbing incident in Sydney’s western suburbs last week.
Last night (Monday 22 April) a federal court granted an interim injunction compelling X to remove videos of a man violently attacking Sydney bishop Emmanuel Mar Mari with a knife that has since circulated on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The tech billionaire has been mocking Albanese for “advertising” X, while doubling down on his view that X is the only platform that is censorship free – a point that is disputed by a user below.
Musk’s posts are a response to an Albanese interview on Sky News, where the Aussie PM labelled him as “a bloke who’s chosen ego and showing violence over common sense”.
“This bloke thinks he’s above the Australian law, that he’s above common decency, and I’ll tell you what, I say to Elon Musk that he is so out of touch with what the Australian public wants,” Albanese said.
“And I find this bloke on the other side of the world, from his billionaire’s establishments, trying to lecture Australians about free speech, well, I won’t cop it and Australians won’t either.”
At the heart of the issue, according to Musk, is whether an individual country should have the power to remove content across the whole of the internet, or has puts it ‘censor the internet’, even though the eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant has only called for videos to be removed from circulation on platforms to audiences in Australia.
Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian “eSafety Commissar” is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?
We have already censored the content in question for… https://t.co/aca9E4uAB7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2024
eSafety: ‘X failed to comply’
Australia’s online safety regulator, eSafety, has released a statement that sheds more light on its impasse with X.
It said that the removal notice does not relate to commentary, public debate or other posts about this event, but only videos of the violent stabbing attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, which is being investigated as a potential terrorist act.
Powers under Australia’s Online Safety Act allows the eSafety commissioner to protect Australians from online harm, including the removal of extreme violent content on social.
eSafety said that following Monday’s attack, it had worked with other platforms, including Google, Microsoft, Snap and TikTok to remove the same material and take proactive steps to reduce the spread of the violent content.
Meta and X Corp were both given Class 1 notices to take down videos after initially failing to comply.
Meta then acted, but X did not, said eSafety, adding: “In the case of X Corp, eSafety was not satisfied that the actions it took constituted compliance and sought this injunction from the federal court. The court granted an interim injunction until 5pm AEST on Wednesday 24 April to allow time for a second hearing to take place at the discretion of the court.”
Meanwhile, not all users on X are convinced it is the ‘free speech’ public forum that Musk champions.
Elon what’s up with the pop ups asking me to reconsider my post? What kind of Kumbaya crap is this? Isn’t this a form of censoring? pic.twitter.com/JazI3TUkRz
— Brave Little Taco (@MesoAmerican60) April 22, 2024
