A judge in Australia ordered social media platform X to block access to a video showing a bishop being stabbed in a Sydney church worldwide.This rule applies to all users, not just those in Australia.
X Corp, a big tech company owned by Elon Musk, said they will go to court to battle orders from Australia to remove posts about a knife attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at an Assyrian Orthodox church while a service was being shown online on April 15.
The material couldn’t be seen in Australia, but people in other places could still watch it.
Australia’s eSafety Commission asked a court to make a temporary ban on sharing a video of the bishop getting stabbed. They are a government agency trying to keep people safe on the internet.
In a meeting held after regular working hours, Judge Geoffrey Kennett stopped the videos from being seen by anyone until Wednesday. On Wednesday, they will decide if the videos should be banned permanently.
X has one day to keep the footage away from users, the judge decided.
The lawyer for the regulator, Stephen Tran, said that blocking access to the footage in Australia doesn’t count as taking it off the internet according to Australian law.
Tran said the video was really graphic and violent and would cause a lot of damage if it keeps getting shared.
X’s lawyer Marcus Hoyne said he couldn’t talk to his client in San Francisco because it was very early in the morning there.
Musk called Julie Inman Grant the “Australian censorship boss. ”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was upset because X didn’t take down pictures of the knife attack at the Christ the Good Shepherd Church.
Albanese said that social media posts, false information, and the sharing of violent pictures made the pain from the church attack worse. Two priests survived the attack, and there was also a knife attack at a Sydney mall two days before that killed six people.
“Albanese said that social media has a duty to society. ” “I think it’s strange that X didn’t follow the rules and is now trying to argue their point. ”
The people in charge of the platform’s Global Government Affairs said that Inman Grant told them to take down some posts about the church attack. However, they said the posts didn’t break X’s rules on violent speech.
X said that the Australian government has told their platform to either remove certain posts from everywhere in the world or pay a daily fine of US$785,000.
“X thinks that eSafety’s request didn’t follow Australian law. We followed the request while waiting for a legal challenge. ” – said the Global Government Affairs account.
“X understands that a country can make its own laws, but the eSafety Commissioner can’t tell X’s users what they can see everywhere in the world. ”
“We will strongly oppose this wrong and risky approach in court,” it said.
The attack on the church was shown on social media, and it made a lot of people angry. 2,000 people gathered and started a riot against the police, who kept the suspected attacker inside the church.
The violent protest hurt 51 police officers and broke 104 police cars, officials said.
Three people who were believed to have caused trouble were arrested by Sunday. On Monday, the police showed pictures of 12 more people who they think were the main people responsible for starting the violence in the riot. They got the pictures from a video of the riot.
A 16-year-old boy who is believed to have stabbed people has been charged with terrorism crimes. He got both negative and positive comments online for the attack.