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Elon Musk has pledged to appeal against a court order in Australia to scrub footage of a violent attack in Sydney from his X social media platform, accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government of censorship.
The billionaire Tesla chief executive has been embroiled in a war of words with Australian politicians over their demands to remove videos of an attack last week on an Assyrian church in Sydney from the X platform.
At least four people, including the church’s bishop, were injured in the attack, which police have called a “terrorist incident” of “religious motivated extremism”.
An Australian federal court late on Monday granted an interim injunction sought by the country’s eSafety commissioner ordering X to hide all videos of the incident within 24 hours.
The court will reconvene on Wednesday, when X will argue against what it called an “unlawful and dangerous approach” to online content.
“Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?,” Musk wrote on X after the injunction was granted, noting that the videos had already been removed for users in Australia.
Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, accused Musk of acting as if he was “above the Australian law” and “common decency”.
“This billionaire is prepared to go to court fighting for the right to sow division and to show violent videos which are very distressing,” Albanese told Sky News. “I won’t cop it and Australians won’t cop it either.”
“Under the law today there are legal prohibitions which limit free speech,” Stephen Jones, assistant treasurer who is involved in tech regulation, told Australian broadcaster ABC. “Yes, we want free speech, but it comes with responsibilities.”
The dispute is the latest between large technology companies and the Australian government, which has been pursuing stronger regulation of online platforms, digital payments and social media. Canberra has threatened action against Facebook and Instagram owner Meta after it pulled out of a deal to pay local publishers for news.
The eSafety commissioner also lodged a removal notice with Meta over the Sydney stabbing attack and said it was “satisfied with” the company’s compliance after it “quickly removed the material”.
Australia established the eSafety commissioner in 2015 as the world’s first dedicated government agency to keep citizens safe online. The body, led by Julie Inman Grant who previously worked at Twitter and Microsoft, has enforcement powers to stop the spread of harmful content online, including the right to levy heavy fines on companies failing to comply with its orders.
The commissioner imposed a A$610,500 (US$394,000) fine against X last year for failing to disclose efforts to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse content, a penalty the company failed to pay.
The commissioner can levy fines of up to A$782,500 per contravention of a removal notice.
The case against X follows two unrelated violent attacks in Sydney this month, one of which resulted in six deaths as well as that of the assailant.
Gruesome footage of the attacks and misinformation about the identity and potential motives of the attacker in one incident were widely circulated online, leading to the wrong person being identified as the culprit.
X has also been the subject of an acrimonious public battle in Brazil, where the country’s attorney-general has called for social media sites to be regulated after Musk posted that a Supreme Court judge should “resign or be impeached” over an order to block certain accounts.
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