Elon Musk vs Australia’s eSafety Commissioner | The Each day Aus

When Elon Musk bought Twitter he promised to make the social media platform a Haven for free speech tonight that commitment is going to be challenged in court by the Australian government as the E safety commissioner has demanded footage of last week's Sydney Church stabbing be removed from the platform so Lucy yesterday morning.

We heard some very strong language come from Australia's prime minister Anthony Alan about Elon Musk who is of course one of the richest people in the world that's right this arrogant billionaire who thinks he's above the law but also above common decency so those comments we just heard related to ex's which is previously known as Twitter ex's legal.

Challenge to a request by Australia to take down videos of a stabbing can you break this all down for us what is going on yes as we'd all remember last Monday police alleg a 16-year-old boy stabbed Bishop marari Emanuel at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in wakeley in Sydney's western suburbs during a live streamed service because of the live stream.

Footage of the alleged incident spread across multiple social media platforms and in response Australia's e safety commissioner ordered meta which owns Facebook and Instagram and X AKA Twitter to take down that footage and we should mention that this was of course only days after the Bondi stabbing but because this church stabbing was live.

Streamed that's why this request by the E safety commissioner is very specific about the church one exactly yes and it's a very there's graphic footage that was immediately quite freely available on social media yeah I'm sure many people listening have probably seen it it was available everywhere as soon as it happened so we talked about the E.

Safety commissioner who is the person or the agency that has made this request of X can you explain who is or what is the e- safety commissioner yeah so so it's both a title and it's a government agency so the title of e safety commissioner is held by Julie Inman Grant and she also heads the e- safety commissioner agency which is Australia's.

Independent regulator of Online safety so for Simplicity let's just say e- safety going forward e- safety was established in 2015 and got a major boost in its powers following the live streamed terror attack in Christ Church in New Zealand in 2019 so e- safety can issue warnings to online services like social media platforms to remove abusive.

Or dangerous content online and that also extends to content that would offend a reasonable adult according to Media Outlet Capital brief meta did comply with e safety's notice uh according to X's Global government Affairs team they also complied but uh not intending to do so permanently so clearly X has an issue here and I think.

To the average person it would seem a little strange that X has this video circulating on its platform of a person getting stabbed and they don't want it to be taken down so what's their reasoning behind that so first of all they said the video of the stabbing quote did not violate X's rules on violent speech and that they believe.

Quote e safety's order was not within the scope of Australian law they said they'd comply pending a legal Challenge and I'll just note at the time of recording this podcast I could still see an unpixelated video of the stabbing onx if I clicked past a warning about graphic content so compliance they've said they're going to comply but as of.

Recording I could see it right their main argument appears to be that Australia's e safety commissioner quote does not have the authority to dictate what content X's users can see globally and that Global takedown orders go against the very principles of a free and open internet and threaten free speech everywhere so we're really seeing.

This idea of like an Australian law on a global platform what kind of impact does that have and that's also been backed up by Elon Musk the owner as well who's posted a lot in the last 24 hours about how this would be allowing Australia to quote censor the entire world hello I'm James and I produced the video you're watching if you're enjoying what you're.

Watching we'd love it if you considered subscribing and checking us out on our other platforms it would really help in getting the word out about what we're doing here at TDA thanks very much and now back to the Deep dive right so I think I understand it more now so the main issue that X has is that Australia is requesting that this video be taken.

Down for all users globally not just the users in Australia yes that's like their key argument they're saying that one country's laws shouldn't necessarily dictate what users in other countries can see and they say that this comes down to free speech so they're also saying that blocking harmful videos is an infringement on freedom of speech and.

I think you mentioned before that the legal challenge is starting to play out tonight so what's happening that's right so this is all going to be something for the courts to decide on Monday night e safety won the right to compel X to hide the videos for two days and then the matter will actually be back in court tonight at the end of that 2-day period.

So I think it'll be really interesting to see how this case is actually argued because in Australia we don't actually have a right to freedom of speech in our constitution yeah that's really interesting because you hear so much about freedom of speech in the US yeah but it's a key point that in Australia we don't have that constitutional right.

Protected in the same way can you explain more about that concept of freedom of speech totally so freedom of speech or freedom of opinion freedom of expression is the right to hold and express opinions without restriction so the UN convention on civil rights says says quote this right shall include freedom to seek receive and impart.

Information and ideas of all kinds regardless of Frontiers either orally in writing or in print in the form of art or through any other media so that generally doesn't extend to hate speech or Expressions that could incite hate you might think of it as the right to like post a Tik Tok that says I hate the government without fearing that you'll.

Be sent to jail over it but if you posted a Tik Tok saying let's all go attack Parliament House at 10 a.m. on Tuesday because I hate the government that would be where you would run into trouble right so what's interesting is that Elon Musk has lived almost his entire adult life and certainly his whole professional life in the United.

States which does have a right to freedom of speech enshrined in its Constitution which Australia does not even though we're a party to un conventions that protect it so it'll be really interesting to see how a freedom of speech argument Stacks up here and I feel like this is not the first time musk has spoken about freedom of speech.

I remember when he bought what was then Twitter he talked a lot about it kind of being seen as this modern Town Square for people to speak their opinions so this kind of follows on from that yes I did a lot of research into this because I really wanted to try and understand why this man who's a tech CEO who has tried to be an innovator cares so much.

About this legal concept So based on my research the first time he was reported as talking about it was in 2018 he told us news show 60 Minutes that freedom of speech was fundamental and that actually came in response to us authorities suing him for false and misleading statements about Tesla the electric car company that he's the CEO of which they alleged.

Had the effect of making its stock price jump up the first time he tweeted about Free Speech was actually in January 2021 which actually isn't that long ago no but it really feels like longer he suggested that quote West Coast Hightech so meaning his fellow like Silicon Valley billionaires were becoming the quote de facto Arbiters of free speech.

After Trump was banned from Twitter before he owned it following the January 6th Capital riots and so my analysis is that after this happened he decided you can beat them and join them by taking over Twitter in pursuit of unrestricted free speech and that's what's led us to today it's a super interesting case and one that will be playing out this week.

I'm sure there will be a lot of headlines in the media and possibly International media because of course this is a global Story Lucy thank you so much for explaining it all thanks so much for having me Billy and thank you so much for listening to the Daily Oz if you would like to help us grow if you can click follow on Spotify or apple.

That would be a huge help and we will see you again tomorrow

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