Elon Musk,owner of X (formerly Twitter),said on the platform on Wednesday afternoon:“Freedom of speech is worth fighting for.”
Julie Inman Grant,the eSafety Commissioner,at Senate estimates on Wednesday.SMH
The company’s global affairs team posted that it welcomed the news that eSafety was no longer seeking global removal of content that did not violate X’s rules.
“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,” the post says.
However,eSafety has not rescinded its takedown notice for the video,which showed Assyrian Christian Bishop at the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley,Sydney. The regulator is defending a case brought by X in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to overturn the notice.
X has measures in place to block Australian users from seeing the Wakeley video while the eSafety directive remains in force,but these controls are easily circumvented by using a VPN (virtual private network).
The eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she stood by her investigators and the decisions her office had made.
“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.
“Most Australians accept this kind of graphic material should not be on broadcast television,which begs an obvious question of why it should be allowed to be distributed freely and accessible online 24/7 to anyone,including children.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has fired back at billionaire Elon Musk,labelling the X boss arrogant.
‘Dog whistle threats’
Inman Grant appeared on ABC television earlier on Wednesday,speaking about the personal cost of the conflict with Musk.
“He issued a dog whistle to 181 million users around the globe,which resulted in death threats directed at me,which resulted in doxxing of my family members,including my three children,so I think with great power comes great responsibility,” she said.
“This is his modus operandi,and I will not be cowed by these kinds of threats – I’m sure more will come,but I’m here to do the right thing to keep Australians safe online,to use the powers that I have and,in fact,test the powers that I have.”
In question time on Wednesday,Communications Minister Michelle Rowland offered her support to Inman Grant. “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.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland.Alex Ellinghausen
Later in question time,Opposition Leader Peter Dutton described Inman Grant as one of Australia’s “finest public servants”. “There’s no more important task in making sure that we keep children safe in our community … these companies operate in a lawless environment and have no regard even for the rule of law,” he said.
While X Corp is painting the Wakeley video as a free speech issue,eSafety highlighted the fact that the company regularly complies with takedown notices in Australia and elsewhere in the world and removes the content from its servers rather than just applying geoblocking controls.
The regulator said that at the same time as X was fighting about the Wakeley video,the company complied with a separate request from eSafety to globally remove a different video. This was a mash-up of several violent incidents,including footage of the Wakeley stabbing,the and an older video showing the killing of two Victorian police officers.
On Thursday eSafety was forced to correct its earlier statement,saying that X had since provided evidence that the removal was for a different reason,and admitting it was mistaken about the mash-up video containing Wakeley footage.
The commission also highlighted that X Corp recently told the European Commission that it took action on 226,000 items of content following reports of illegality,and “globally deleted 40,000 items of content”. It said it had clear rules that meant it removed violent and illegal content,including content showing terrorist attacks.
The teenager alleged to have stabbed the bishop in Wakeley faces a Commonwealth terrorism charge.
X Corp and eSafety are embroiled in several other cases in the Federal Court and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
One of the key cases for the regulator is a Federal Court case about X Corp failing to comply with an order to be transparent about its efforts to block child sexual abuse and not paying a $610,500 fine for non-compliance.
With Olivia Ireland
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