Australia dropped efforts to remove a video from a church stabbing in Sydney from X on Wednesday. File Photo by Ismael Mohamad/ UPI | License Photo
Australia’s eSafety commissioner said on Wednesday abandoned efforts to remove graphic footage of a church stabbing in Sydney from Elon Musk’s social media platform X after several failures in court.
Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant had sought to remove the video from the social media site in federal court. The case was seen as a test of the country’s online safety legislation. Inman-Grant had argued that the video would be easily accessible for children. Advertisement
“After weighing multiple considerations, including litigation across multiple cases, I have considered this option likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children,” Inman-Grant said in a statement.
Inman-Grant said she removed her notice to X in the administrative appeals tribunal.
“Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community and I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made,” Inman-Grant said.
X’s Global Government Affairs posted that it was pleased with the decision for the commission to pull back on its plans to block the video. Advertisement
“We welcome the news that the eSafety Commissioner is no longer pursuing legal action against X seeking the global removal of content that does not violate X’s rules,” X Global Government Affairs said.
“This case has raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech and we are heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed.”
