Australia’s prime minister has labelled X’s owner, Elon Musk, an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law” as the rift deepens between Australia and the tech platform over the removal of videos of a violent stabbing in a Sydney church.
On Monday evening in an urgent last-minute federal court hearing, the court ordered a two-day injunction against X to hide posts globally containing the footage of the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel on 15 April. The eSafety commissioner had previously directed X to remove the posts, but X had only blocked them from access in Australia pending a legal challenge.
Anthony Albanese on Tuesday said Musk was “a bloke who’s chosen ego and showing violence over common sense”.
“Australians will shake their head when they think that this billionaire is prepared to go to court fighting for the right to sow division and to show violent videos,” he told Sky News. “He is in social media, but he has a social responsibility in order to have that social licence.”
“What the eSafety commissioner is doing is doing her job to protect the interests of Australians. 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,” he said.
Elon Musk is an atrocious person, but the government of any country shouldn’t have the ability to remove content from the internet.
forgive me if im wrong, but isnt it removed from twitter if viewed from aussie?
Yes but the Australian govenrment is currently attempting to force Twitter to pull it worldwide. Musk’s “muh free speech” argument is obviously a moronic one in this example, but there is a broader question here about whether global take-down orders are a good thing for the internet or if any country should have the right to implement them.
@Ilandar @quoll You mean like the US government’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
I’m not super familiar with how DMCA take-down requests work or where they typically originate from so I couldn’t definitively say. Australia has its own copyright laws and in instances of potential copyright infringement companies operating within Australia have historically been held to account by Australian courts as opposed to foreign ones.
in the absence of any treaty or international law it seems pretty absurd that a random bureaucrat in a 3rd rate power should be able to dictate such a thing.
but guess if twitter has an office in aussie, go nuts. musky boy can decide if he want to do business here or fuck off. fingers crossed for the latter to be honest.