Australia drops case against X over stabbing videos

[Pelican Press 0]

Australia drops case against X over stabbing videos

Australia has abandoned a legal battle to have graphic footage of a ******* stabbing in Sydney removed from Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

Declared a ******* incident by police, the ******* on bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in April was livestreamed online and led to riots outside the *******.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, an independent regulator, threatened X and other social media companies with hefty fines if they did not remove videos of the stabbing, concerned it could incite further *********.

The case was seen as a test of Australia’s ability to enforce its online safety rules on the social media giants.

The Federal Court had temporarily ordered X hide the videos – but it refused to comply saying the order was not valid.

X, formerly

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, did eventually block access to the video in Australia, but users could easily get around this by using a VPN.

Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant – who herself once worked for

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– had asked for the video to be removed globally, prompting Mr Musk to call her a “censorship commissar”.

*********** Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded by labelling Musk an “arrogant billionaire”.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ms Inman-Grant said owing to “multiple considerations”, dropping the case was “likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children”.

“Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further ********* and inflicting more harm on the *********** community,” she said.

She added that she stood by the decisions the eSafety Commission had made.

X had previously argued the commission’s orders were “unlawful and dangerous”.

“Global takedown orders go against the very principles of a free and open internet and threaten free speech everywhere,” it said in a statement.

“This was a tragic event and we do not allow people to praise it or call for further *********,” it added.

Ms Inman-Grant has previously told the ABC Mr Musk’s attention resulted in a pile-on from his millions of followers – which included ****** threats and the personal information of her children being exposed online.

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