Elon Musk is once again fighting efforts to remove content from X. This time he’s facing off with Australian authorities who are demanding that Musk remove a violent video from X. The video in question was recorded during a livestreamed church service in Sydney last week, where a 16-year-old stabbed the church’s bishop. It was subsequently circulated on X and other social networks, at which point Australian authorities ordered them to remove it. X complied, but only in Australia.Australia’s eSafety commissioner has the power to remove material that “promotes, incites, instructs in, or depicts abhorrent violent conduct” that could “go viral and cause significant harm to the Australian community.” As such, the commissioner instructed X to remove the video from the platform globally, not just in Australia. Musk and X argue that the video should be allowed to remain online outside Australia.
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“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?” he tweeted. He goes on to say that the video can’t be viewed by Australian citizens and that the footage isn’t stored on Australian servers. X’s Global Government Affairs account added: “X believes that eSafety’s order was not within the scope of Australian law and we complied with the directive pending a legal challenge.”As The Wall Street Journal reports, Google, Microsoft, Snap, and TikTok removed the video across their platforms globally. Meta did the same after some pushback. That leaves X as the last major social media platform that still hosts the video. “While the majority of mainstream social media platforms have engaged with us, I am not satisfied enough is being done to protect Australians from this most extreme and gratuitous violent material circulating online,” Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, said in a press conference, The Verge reports. “That is why I am exercising my powers under the Online Safety Act to formally compel them to remove it.”
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On Monday, an Australian judge issued a temporary injunction requiring X to hide the video, but there will be hearings to determine what happens if X continues to resist, the WSJ says. Australia could fine X upwards of $500,000 per violation.X recently got in a similar battle with authorities in Brazil who wanted X to block certain accounts, but it ultimately complied with the request.Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel survived the church attack; a 16-year-old was arrested after church members helped subdue him, CNN reports.
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