Elon Musk is mad he’s been ordered to remove Sydney church stabbing videos from X. He’d be more furious if he saw our other laws
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Tuesday, April 23, 2024
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Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has ordered social media platform “X” (formerly known as Twitter) to remove graphic videos of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Sydney last week from the site.
Key Points:
- Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has ordered social media platform “X” (formerly known as Twitter) to remove graphic videos of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in Sydney last week from the site.
- In response to this order, X’s owner, Elon Musk, has branded the commissioner the “Australian censorship commissar”.
- Read more:
Why is the Sydney church stabbing an act of terrorism, but the Bondi tragedy isn't?
Prompt political fallout
- Labor minister Tanya Plibersek referred to Musk as an “egotistical billionaire”.
- Of course such damning remarks directed towards a much-maligned website and its equally controversial owner are to be expected.
What do federal laws say?
- The power she exercised under part nine of that act was to issue a “removal notice”.
- The removal notice requires a social media platform to take down material that would be refused classification under the Classification Act.
- While it’s these laws being applied in the case against X, there are other laws that can come into play.
- It is a variation of this bill, reflecting the substantial range of views on the draft, that now has bipartisan support.
What else could be done?
Perhaps the gruesome images in the Wakeley videos might remind some of the Christchurch massacre. In that attack, Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone (now part of TPG), cut access to sites such as 4Chan, which were disseminating video of the attack. This was without any prompting from either the eSafety Commissioner or from law enforcement agencies.
- She would need to be satisfied the material depicts abhorrent violent conduct and be satisfied the availability of the material online is likely to cause significant harm to the Australian community.
- This means the commissioner could give a blocking notice to telcos which would have to block X for as long as the abhorrent material is available on the X platform.
- This would be a breach of the terrorism prohibitions under the federal Criminal Code.
Rob Nicholls receives funding from the Australian Research Council for the International Digital Policy Observatory.