Elon Musk’s social media site, X, has come under fire from the Australian premier and opposition leaders for refusing to comply with a government demand to remove articles about a knife assault on a bishop that the authorities had classed as a terror act.
The government’s social media spat with Elon Musk has intensified, according to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who called Musk a “arrogant billionaire.”
This follows an Australian court’s Monday decision for X to remove certain posts that discussed the Sydney bishop stabbing.
A two-day order compelling the social media site to conceal some tweets about a knife attack last week against an Assyrian church bishop, Mar Mari Emmanuel, during a service at his church, was granted by Australia’s federal court to the nation’s cyber regulator, the eSafety commissioner.
Aimed at Musk, Albanese blasted the “arrogant billionaire” on Tuesday for defying the Australian government’s orders to remove the information.
X has violent content.
X claimed that the government had no right to control what its users might view internationally and hence had restricted the content for users in Australia, but it would not block the posts for users outside of the nation.
Online videos of the attack showed the assailant yelling at the bishop while being held back by the congregation. Regarding the attack, police have accused a 16-year-old with terrorism.
A few entries, maybe including videos, that made public comments on the attack were requested to be taken down by the regulator.
While Albanese argued that social media had a social duty, Musk was battling to prevent violent content from appearing on his platform.
Persuasion and censorship
“On Tuesday, Albanese told national broadcaster ABC, ‘We’ll do whatever it takes to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.”
“What the eSafety Commissioner is doing, is doing her job to protect the interests of Australians.”
Musk had earlier criticized Albanese for calling X the “Australian censorship commissar” when he referred to the eSafety commissioner as such, calling X’s efforts to remove violent content “extraordinary”.
Musk wrote on X, “I’d like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one,” a few hours before Albanese’s Tuesday remarks.
In a graphic that Musk shared, it seemed to be saying that X stood for “free speech and truth,” while “censorship and propaganda” controlled other social media sites.
SOURCE: TRTWORLD
