Australia’s prime minister has labelled the X owner, Elon Musk, an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law” as the rift deepens between Australia and the tech platform over the removal of videos of a violent stabbing in a Sydney church.
On Monday evening in an urgent last-minute federal court hearing, the court ordered a two-day injunction against X to hide posts globally containing the footage of the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel last Monday evening that the eSafety commissioner had directed X to remove, but X had only blocked from access in Australia pending a legal challenge.
Anthony Albanese on Tuesday said Musk was “a bloke who’s chosen ego and showing violence over common sense”.
“Australians will shake their head when they think that this billionaire is prepared to go to court fighting for the right to sow division and to show violent videos,” he told Sky News. “He is in social media, but he has a social responsibility in order to have that social licence.”
He told the ABC that Musk was “an arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law”.
“What the eSafety commissioner is doing is doing her job to protect the interests of Australians. And the idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out of touch Mr Musk is,” he said.
On Tuesday morning, Musk tweeted that the company was concerned 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 Australia, pending legal appeal, and it is stored only on servers in the USA.”
That is exactly the issue.
Should the eSafety Commissar (an unelected official) in Australia have authority over all countries on Earth? https://t.co/wzv4Uinx8y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 23, 2024
Overnight Australian time, Musk tweeted a meme claiming that X represented the “truth” and “free speech while other platforms were censoring content” and “propaganda”, and added “don’t take my word for it, just ask the Australian PM!”
He also reposted a tweet from a user claiming that Albanese was “advertising” for Elon by mentioning that other platforms had complied with requests to remove the content while X had not. Musk added: “I’d like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one.”
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X had withheld access to the tweets for Australian users but Christopher Tran, the barrister for the eSafety commissioner, argued it did not represent removal of the posts that were deemed to be “class 1” content under Australian classification law for material deemed to depict “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail”. This was because the posts were still available outside Australia, and to Australian users accessing X using a virtual private network (VPN).
The federal court has issued the injunction until 5pm on Wednesday 25 April, pending X’s local legal counsel receiving instructions on X’s response to the case.
On Monday night, a spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner said Meta, Google, Microsoft, Snap and TikTok had worked to remove similar content in the past weeks, and eSafety “will continue to use its suite of powers under the Online Safety Act to protect Australians from serious online harms, including extreme violent content”.
Guardian Australia has asked the office of the eSafety commissioner if X had complied with the order. X was also approached for comment. Uncensored videos of the alleged stabbing were still searchable on X as of Tuesday morning.
