Cross posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/13351707
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.
Which comments? I read all of them, and saying, “he’s an asshole who happens to be right about this” hardly seems like “sucking his dick”.
This is a massive overreach by Australia. Countries should not be trying to mandate what content is acceptable for other countries. Even their argument about VPNs meaning that geoblocking won’t work is a terrible argument, because they’re basically arguing that X is responsible for stopping Australians from breaking Australian law.
Buying the idea that their citizens might circumvent security controls in order to access content they don’t allow, so that content cannot be allowed anywhere else, would be like saying it makes sense to ban mature video games globally because kids will find ways to play them otherwise (and I bring that up because Australia is notorious for banning video games with similar arguments, and didn’t allow mature games until 2013).
If China was telling social media sites to delete content that it doesn’t like, outside of China, we’d all be telling them to fuck off.
Lastly, and very important to note, the Bishop whose stabbing this is all about has said he thinks the video should not be censored.