Australia’s Federal Court has granted the eSafety commissioner a two-day legal injunction to compel X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, to hide posts showing graphic content of the Wakeley church stabbing in Sydney.
Mr Musk has criticised eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant for what he has described as censorship and ‘global content bans’.
Dr Dana McKay, Associate Dean of Interaction, Technology and Information in the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT has responded by saying, ‘Not all censorship is bad when it is applied to situations like graphic and illegal content. There are a range of things that we, as a society, agree shouldn’t be posted online.
‘Technology has been designed by a very small, non-diverse group of people but is used by everyone. This often has negative consequences for the people who didn’t design it.
‘These platforms promote content that gets more engagement – be it reactions, views or shares – and this increases the risk that users could see certain types of content without wanting to.’
Dr McKay says that in the case of violent material, this could have severe negative consequences for people’s mental health, especially if they have experienced serious violence themselves.
What now?
From Wednesday at 5pm X has been ordered to hide the posts in contention from all users worldwide, while the matter is considered.
Should X choose not to comply with the orders of the eSafety Commissioner (who used to work for Twitter), it could be fined up to $550,000 or have their links removed from search engines.
Elon Musk has ramped up his rhetoric about what he calls Australia’s ‘censorship commissar’, saying he will challenge the Australian government’s position court.
X is already challenging an $800,000 fine for refusing to remove posts harassing an Australian World Health Organisation panel member, and has been fined $610,500 for failing to cooperate with a probe into anti-child-abuse practices (this matter is now in mediation).
Yesterday Prime Minister Albanese expressed incredulity about Mr Musk’s attitude, saying ‘this isn’t about freedom of expression – social media has a social responsibility’.
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