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’.
My question with this censorship is “where will it end?”
The commissioner’s reasoning is only, that this sort of content might “distress” some. It’s not “fake” content or breaking any other rules. And X did block the videos from Australian viewers, so complied to a point.
I’m sure that a loss of a particularly important footy game will ” distress” some of the team’s diehard fans. Will showing footage of the deciding moves in this game fall under censorship rules in future?
Personally, I was very “distressed”, when I saw the footage of an elderly woman in a red coat being pushed to the ground by police during the Melbourne Anti-Lockdown protests a few years ago and then pepper sprayed by another officer. Nevertheless it was important video evidence, which needs to be in the public conscience, which needs to be shown! A ruling like the current one would also have this footage fall under censorship rulings – hidden from the public.
Quite, given all the violence in the world one wonders why the government is so concerned with this one particular church. Mmm . . .
Agreed. ABC TV news this week went with the Elon “bad” narrative, only to show pictures of an African ferry disaster where multiple people died as their very next story.
Appears (well, stands out like a sore thumb) that this is more about censorship of media/owners who refuse to follow narratives, rather than the actual content they are referring to which is pretty light compared to most evening news or other content on not-so-social media.
The ‘Commissioner’ is a former employee of Elon, who was fired for excessive censorship, and so she is trying to impose her excess on all Australians, with a particular emphasis on Elon (vendetta). Get rid of this esafety (Ministry of Truth), and kick this foreign nut-job out of our country!
I can only agree with your post.
Who will decide what is ‘acceptable ‘ viewing, Sky ?
There is areal world out there , and nothing but the truth is acceptable in a news story, violent or not !
Albanese is getting too used to ‘ spin’ to know what is the truth any more.
Cheers,G”)
Too true CVS, hit the nail square on the nogging mate. . . ….