Elon Musk has made it clear he will not comply with Australia’s order to remove a video of a terror attack against a Sydney cleric from X (formerly Twitter).
"Our concern is that if any country is allowed to censor content for all countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?" the tech billionaire tweeted.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that X has "already censored the content in question for Australia, pending legal appeal, and it is stored only on servers" in the US. Per X, Canberra threatened it with a daily fine of $510,000 over the company’s unwillingness to remove the video across the globe.
Musk’s remarks came after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed the X owner as an "arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency."
Speaking to broadcaster ABC, Albanese added that "the idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr. Musk is."
This followed Australia’s eSafety Commission calling for X to completely remove the video from its platform for all users rather than just block the footage in the world’s sixth-largest country.
According to Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, "Every minute counts, and the more this content is up there, the more it is reshared, the more the velocity and the virality continues and we need to stem that."
In the video, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of the Assyrian Orthodox Church is seen being stabbed during a church service in the suburbs of Sydney that was being livestreamed on April 15. The non-fatal attack, which the authorities said was a terrorist act motivated by suspected religious extremism, quickly garnered multiple views online and reportedly led to protests near the crime scene.