Australia drops censorship fight threatening Musk’s X with $500K daily fine.
Australia’s safety regulator has ended a legal battle with X (formerly Twitter) after threatening approximately $500,000 daily fines for failing to remove 65 instances of a religiously motivated stabbing video from X globally.
Enforcing Australia’s Online Safety Act, eSafety commissioner Julie Inman-Grant had argued it would be dangerous for the videos to keep spreading on X, potentially inciting other acts of terror in Australia.
But X owner Elon Musk refused to comply with the global takedown order, arguing that it would be “unlawful and dangerous” to allow one country to control the global Internet. And Musk was not alone in this fight. The legal director of a nonprofit digital rights group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Corynne McSherry, backed up Musk, urging the court to agree that “no single country should be able to restrict speech across the entire Internet.”
“We welcome the news that the eSafety Commissioner is no longer pursuing legal action against X seeking the global removal of content that does not violate X’s rules,” X’s Global Government Affairs account posted late Tuesday night. “This case has raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech, and we are heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed.”
Inman-Grant was formerly Twitter’s director of public policy in Australia and used that experience to land what she told The Courier-Mail was her “dream role” as Australia’s eSafety commissioner in 2017. Since issuing the order to remove the video globally on X, Inman-Grant had traded barbs with Musk (along with other Australian lawmakers), responding to Musk labeling her a “censorship commissar” by calling him an “arrogant billionaire” for fighting the order.Advertisement
On X, Musk arguably got the last word, posting, “Freedom of speech is worth fighting for.”
Safety regulator still defends takedown order
In a statement, Inman-Grant said early Wednesday that her decision to discontinue proceedings against X was part of an effort to “consolidate actions,” including “litigation across multiple cases.” She ultimately determined that dropping the case against X would be the “option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children.”
“Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community,” Inman-Grant said, still defending the order despite dropping it.
In court, X’s lawyer Marcus Hoyne had pushed back on such logic, arguing that the eSafety regulator’s mission was “pointless” because “footage of the attack had now spread far beyond the few dozen URLs originally identified,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
“I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made,” Inman-Grant said.
Other Australian lawmakers agree the order was not out of line. According to AP News, Australian Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland shared a similar statement in parliament today, backing up the safety regulator while scolding X users who allegedly took up Musk’s fight by threatening Inman-Grant and her family. The safety regulator has said that Musk’s X posts incited a “pile-on” from his followers who allegedly sent death threats and exposed her children’s personal information, the BBC reported.
“The government backs our regulators and we back the eSafety Commissioner, particularly in light of the reprehensible threats to her physical safety and the threats to her family in the course of doing her job,” Rowland said.
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Stabbing victim wanted video to remain on X
Inman-Grant said that an administrative appeals tribunal would soon conduct “a thorough and independent merits review” of the commission’s decision to issue the removal notice to X Corp. The safety regulator argued that broadcast TV would not show such violence as depicted in the stabbing video, “which begs an obvious question of why it should be allowed to be distributed freely and accessible online 24/7 to anyone, including children.”
She maintained that “it was a reasonable expectation” for X to remove the video globally, partly because other platforms—including Meta, Microsoft, Google, Snap, TikTok, Reddit, and Telegram—took it down without questioning the request.
However, Musk has long tried to distinguish his platform from others by claiming that other platforms more freely censor users. To fight back against Australia’s order, X got the victim of the stabbing, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, to write an affidavit supporting X and insisting that the video should not be removed globally.
Emmanuel later posted a video online sharing his feelings on the matter. In it, he acknowledged “the Australian government’s desire to have the videos removed because of their graphic nature” and confirmed that he does “not condone any acts of terrorism or violence.” However, he said as a defender of freedom of speech and religion, he is “not opposed to the videos remaining on social media.”
“It would be of great concern if people use the attack on me to serve their own political interest to control free speech,” Emmanuel said. “The moment we oppress this very freedom of speech and religion, we are losing the very human identity and dignity as well.”
Global takedowns should be rare, expert says
X’s Global Government Affairs account had previously said that X would “robustly challenge” the eSafety regulator’s efforts to block the video because the order was “unlawful and dangerous.” The X account defended X’s decision to simply geo-block the video in Australia only, arguing that “global takedown orders go against the very principles of a free and open Internet and threaten free speech everywhere.”
“This was a tragic event and we do not allow people to praise it or call for further violence,” X’s account posted. “There is a public conversation happening about the event, on X and across Australia, as is often the case when events of major public concern occur. While X respects the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, the eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally.”Advertisement
Inman-Grant’s efforts to enforce the order against X were viewed by some as a test of Australia’s online safety act’s ability to restrict social media platforms. EFF’s McSherry suggested that Australia’s law should specify when a global takedown is appropriate, just as the Digital Services Act does.
McSherry had warned that “a ruling against X is effectively a declaration that an Australian court (or its eSafety Commissioner) can prevent Internet users around the world from accessing something online, even if the law in their own country is quite different.” This, McSherry cautioned, would be “a big step toward unchecked global censorship” that could “normalize” judicial overreach and lead to a splintered Internet.
David Greene, the EFF’s civil liberties director provided a statement to Ars’ on Australia’s decision to drop the case.
“We are pleased that the Commissioner saw the error in his efforts and dropped the action,” Greene said. “Global takedown orders threaten freedom of expression around the world, create conflicting legal obligations, and lead to the lowest common denominator of Internet content being available around the world, allowing the least tolerant legal system to determine what we all are able to read and distribute online.”
Because Inman-Grant dropped the case, we’ll never know how it would’ve played out in court. McSherry told the court that an order like Australia’s should be considered a “last resort and issued only in the rarest of circumstances,” with a legal threshold for orders seeking to “restrict free expression on the Internet in foreign jurisdictions” regarded as “exceedingly high and unlikely to be met.”
In McSherry’s view, a country should only be allowed to enforce a global takedown order online if it passes a six-point balancing test. Such a test would require that there are no reasonable alternatives to prevent substantial or irreparable harms, the order is appropriately limited and technically feasible and effective, and the benefits of enforcing the order outweigh “deleterious effects on the rights and interests” of online users, including their rights to free speech.
The EFF and X argued that was not the case with Australia’s order, which McSherry described as Inman-Grant attempting to use “a sledgehammer to crack a nut.”
