The Australian government demanded that Twitter/X remove the recent church stabbing video that took place in Sydney and they complied pending a legal challenge in order to avoid fines.
RT:
Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has accused Australia’s eSafety commissioner of censorship, and vowed to contest in court an order to remove content related to the recent Sydney church stabbing.
According to a statement issued by the social media giant on Saturday, the Australian online safety watchdog had demanded that the company “globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000 AUD (about $500,000 USD).”
On Monday, four people, including a bishop with a worldwide online following, were wounded in a knife attack at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the district of Wakeley in Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was speaking during an evening service when a young man approached and lunged at him with a knife, repeatedly stabbing the bishop in the head and chest, while reportedly referring to insults against “my Prophet.”
The incident – which also left two officers injured and was declared an act of terrorism by police – was captured on a church livestream and quickly circulated online.
Following the tragic event, the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, issued a notice to X and Meta, ordering them to remove material that depicts “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact or detail.”
X hit back at the regulator, saying, “eSafety’s order was not within the scope of Australian law,” adding that the company complied with the directive “pending a legal challenge.”
“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,” X’s Global Government Affairs team said in a statement.
The proper response would have been to tell these government censors to fuck off leaving the videos up everywhere. Instead of telling them to fuck off, they complied with their demands. Them removing the content while claiming the Australian government doesn’t have the authority to do this is basically them admitting that the government does have the authority.
Outside of telling them to fuck off, they alternatively could have just closed down all Australian government accounts and asked them to reevaluate their attitude towards the free exchange information.
Removing the content and saying they’re going to sue is stupid and is literally one of the least useful positions to have on this. Between this and the trouble at Tesla, Musk just keeps racking up the losses.
