Elon Musk accused Australia of trying to have “jurisdiction over all of Earth.”
An Australian federal court sided with Elon Musk on Monday, rejecting an Australian safety regulator’s request to extend a temporary order blocking a terrorist attack video from spreading on Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter).
The video showed a teen stabbing an Assyrian bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel—whose popular, sometimes controversial TikTok sermons often garner millions of views—during a church livestream that rapidly spread online.
Police later determined it was a religiously motivated terrorist act after linking the 16-year-old charged in the stabbing to a group of seven teens “accused of following a violent extremist ideology in raids across Sydney,” AP News reported. Bishop Emmanuel has since reassured his followers that he recovered quickly and forgave the teen, Al Jazeera reported.
In April, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, had cited Australia’s Online Safety Act and asked X to remove 65 posts showing footage from the attack, Reuters reported, but X refused to remove the posts.
X owner Elon Musk said that Australia could not expect to enforce its safety law globally, accusing Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of attempting to have “jurisdiction over all of Earth.”
“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?” Musk wrote on X.
Instead of removing the posts, X geo-blocked anyone in Australia from viewing the footage. Australia’s safety regulator considered this inadequate because roughly 25 percent of Australians use virtual private networks to mask their locations online.
It also appeared unclear if X’s geo-blocking was working as intended. A Reuters journalist in Australia reported that the video remained accessible without a VPN. And on a thread where some Redditors defended Musk for bucking the order, some agreed that X’s attempt at geo-blocking appeared futile.
In his ruling Monday, Federal Court Judge Geoffrey Kennett did not explain why he denied the safety regulator’s request to extend the temporary order. On Wednesday, there will be a case management hearing that could shed light on his decision. A final hearing on the matter is expected in the coming weeks, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC News) reported.
While X has notched a win today, there could be fines on the horizon. For failing to comply with the order, X risks fines under the Online Safety Act, as well as potentially contempt of court fines.
And it wouldn’t be the first time X was fined for violating the law. Last year, X became the first platform fined under the safety law and was required to pay about $386,000 after failing to cooperate with the regulator’s anti-child abuse probe on the platform, The New York Times reported.
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Australia lawmakers resort to name-calling Musk
After receiving the order to remove the terrorist attack video, Musk threatened to sue, but the safety regulator filed its complaint first, ABC News reported. Meanwhile, Musk failing to comply and criticizing Australia’s government online triggered heated responses from several Australian lawmakers.
Australia’s prime minister, Albanese, reportedly told local media previously that Australia “will do what is necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law but also above common decency, 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. Social media needs to have social responsibility with it. Mr. Musk is not showing any.” According to Reuters, the Australian government has already scheduled a “parliamentary inquiry to look into the negative impacts of social media.”
Other lawmakers similarly jabbed at Musk as the standoff ensued. A government minister, Tanya Plibersek, called Musk an “egotistical billionaire,” Business Insider reported, and a senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, joined the call for “stronger laws” to tax Big Tech corporations and contain “narcissistic” cowboys like Musk.
“Elon Musk is a narcissistic cowboy who thinks he can give the middle finger to the Australian government, because for too long we’ve had little to no regulation,” Hanson-Young said. “We don’t tax these guys. And they’ve been able to do whatever they want for far too long. It’s got to come to an end.”Advertisement
X is hoping that Justice Kennett remains on Musk’s side, but even a ruling in X’s favor may not end the controversy. Australia’s attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has confirmed that his office plans to carefully examine the court’s decision, ABC News reported.
X terms on removing terrorist content unclear
Musk says this fight is all about stopping censorship, posting a meme that criticized other companies that complied with Australia’s removal request, including Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snapchat, and TikTok.
The meme showed a young boy standing at a fork in a road, deciding between free speech and truth on X or censorship and propaganda on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, and YouTube. These are the choices that all online users face, Musk suggested in his post, writing, “don’t take my word for it, just ask the Australian PM!”
On X, the policy is to “limit dissemination” of content produced by perpetrators of terrorist or violent extremist attacks, including manifestos or content that shows their plan of attack. That includes the option to remove X posts, including “bystander-generated content of the attack as the attack is taking place, such as content that displays a moment of the assault or death, dead bodies, content that identifies victims, or content that depicts the perpetrator(s) conducting the attack.”
X does sometimes make exceptions to its policies on hateful conduct and behavior when there’s public interest. But X said on its website that it does “not anticipate cases where the public-interest exception would apply” to content promoting terrorism or violent extremism.
It’s unclear if perhaps the public-interest exception applies in this case or if X simply considered limiting dissemination in Australia as appropriate to reduce harm from this particular attack.
X did not respond to Ars’ request to clarify its terms.
