SYDNEY, June 5 — Australia’s cyber safety regulator today dropped a legal challenge against X over the removal of videos showing an Assyrian church bishop in Sydney being stabbed, after a setback last month in the federal court.
Judge Geoffrey Kennett in May rejected a bid by the eSafety commissioner to extend a temporary order for the social media platform to block videos of the knife attack, which Australian authorities had called a terrorist attack.
Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement the regulator decided to drop its legal action against X.
“Most Australians accept this kind of graphic material should not be on broadcast television, which begs an obvious question of why it should be allowed to be distributed freely and accessible online 24/7 to anyone, including children,” Grant said.
She said a major concern was the ease by which children were able to access the violent content on X.
Grant said she originally issued X the notice to remove the video to prevent the “extremely violent footage from going viral”, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the community.
“I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made,” she said.
A 16-year-old boy was charged with a terrorism offence for the alleged attack in April.
The legal tussle sparked heated exchanges between X owner Elon Musk and senior Australian officials, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who called Musk “an arrogant billionaire” for his objections to taking down the video.
Musk has posted memes criticising the regulatory order, calling it censorship.
Other major platforms such as Meta, TikTok, Reddit and Telegram took down the video when asked.
X had blocked Australian users from viewing the posts but refused to remove them globally on the grounds that one country’s rules should not control the internet.
But the regulator argued that geo-blocking Australians, the solution X offered, was ineffective as some users used virtual private networks that disguise their locations.
— Reuters
