23 April 2024, 11:00 AM IST
Sydney: Elon Musk has opposed the Australian government’s request to remove the video of the stabbing of Orthodox bishop Mar Marie Emmanuel from social media. Musk came out against the demand for a worldwide ban on the video. The bishop was attacked at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Walkley, Sydney on the evening of Monday, April 15. Its video has been widely circulated on social media.
Following this, the Australian E-Safety Commissioner Julie Imman instructed X and Meta to remove the video within 24 hours. With this, the X video was removed within the Australian territory. But the E-Safety Commission approached the court demanding a temporary ban on the video worldwide.
After an hours-long hearing, Justice Geoffrey Kennett ordered that the video be blocked until Wednesday. The court will hear the plea for complete removal of the video on Wednesday. X was given 24 hours. Musk came against this.
Our concern is that any one country is allowed to censor the content of entire countries. That is what the Australian eCommissioner is asking for. So how can any one country control the entire internet? The video is currently censored for Australia, pending a legal appeal, and is only stored on servers in the USA.’ Musk said in a post shared on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese severely criticized Musk’s stance against the proposal.
At the same time, X said that Australia has also demanded the removal of some posts that comment on the attack along with the video.
In a post shared by X on April 19, X said that they believe that the order of this safety commission does not fall within the scope of Australian law and the order was followed because the case is pending in court. The company also stated in the post that the e-Safety Commissioner demanded that these posts be blocked globally or face a fine of 785,000 Australian dollars per day.
After Elon Musk took ownership of Twitter, the name was changed to X. After this, the company relaxed its restrictions on the content shared on X. The company and Musk have faced major backlash over X’s space for freedom of speech, including hate speech.
