Elon Musk yesterday lashed out at Australia’s prime minister after a court ordered his social media company X to take down footage of an alleged terrorist attack in Sydney, and said the ruling meant any nation could control “the entire Internet.”
At a hearing overnight, Australia’s Federal Court ordered X to temporarily hide posts showing video of the incident a week earlier, in which a teenager was charged with terrorism for knifing an Assyrian priest and others.
X said it had already blocked the posts from Australian users, but Australia’s e-safety commissioner had said the content should be taken down since it showed explicit violence.
Photo: Reuters
“Does the PM think he should have jurisdiction over all of Earth?” Musk wrote in a post, referring to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The billionaire, who bought X in 2022 with a declared mission to save free speech, posted a meme on the platform that showed X stood for “free speech and truth,” while other social media platforms represented “censorship and propaganda.”
Musk also wrote 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?”
The pushback by the world’s third-richest person sets up a new front in the battle between the world’s largest Internet platforms and nations and nonprofits seeking more oversight of the content hosted on them.
Australia’s e-safety commissioner fined X A$610,500 (US$393,895) last year for failing to cooperate with a probe on anti-child abuse practices. X is fighting that penalty in court.
Albanese hit back at Musk, saying the nation would “do what’s necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.”
“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,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Although Musk wrote in another post that X had “blocked the content in question for Australian IP addresses,” the video could be seen on the platform by a Reuters journalist in Australia.
Alice Dawkins, executive director of Internet policy nonprofit Reset.Tech Australia, said Musk’s comments fit “the company’s chaotic and negligent approach to the most basic user safety considerations that, under previous leadership, the platform used to take seriously.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
OPTIMISTIC: A Philippine Air Force spokeswoman said the military believed the crew were safe and were hopeful that they and the jet would be recovered A Philippine Air Force FA-50 jet and its two-person crew are missing after flying in support of ground forces fighting communist rebels in the southern Mindanao region, a military official said yesterday. Philippine Air Force spokeswoman Colonel Consuelo Castillo said the jet was flying “over land” on the way to its target area when it went missing during a “tactical night operation in support of our ground troops.” While she declined to provide mission specifics, Philippine Army spokesman Colonel Louie Dema-ala confirmed that the missing FA-50 was part of a squadron sent “to provide air support” to troops fighting communist rebels in
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
ECONOMIC DISTORTION? The US commerce secretary’s remarks echoed Elon Musk’s arguments that spending by the government does not create value for the economy US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Sunday said that government spending could be separated from GDP reports, in response to questions about whether the spending cuts pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency could possibly cause an economic downturn. “You know that governments historically have messed with GDP,” Lutnick said on Fox News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. “They count government spending as part of GDP. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.” Doing so could potentially complicate or distort a fundamental measure of the US economy’s health. Government spending is traditionally included in the GDP because
RSS