eSafety Commissioner, the Australian Government, and the massive own goal

At the time of writing this post, the Federal Court of Australia has made an interim ruling that Elon Musk's X Corp. must hide certain posts globally behind a notice at the demand of the Australian Government's eSafety Commissioner.

Australian politicians haven't quite grasped the concept of the Streisand effect yet... they're issuing notices and giving platforms 24hrs notice to remove content, meanwhile people are learning about the notices and going out of their way to view/share the content before the post/s can be pulled... FKN LOL!

In case you are unsure what exactly the eSafety Commissioner is trying to censor, it is posts containing this video below

This video is by all measures mild. There are a number of politicians running around like headless chooks pretending that this is super terrible, but let's look at the facts:

a) There is no visible blood or gore.

b) There is no loss of life, the victim is recovering well and has made a public statement stating as much (including forgiving his attacker).

c) I could point to significantly more grotesque videos I have seen this month such as a couple of kids who got electrocuted leaning on some train tracks, a school girl getting bashed within an inch of her life by other kids.

We see horrible footage of things every day online, such is life. Also, you can't even see the knife that the teenage offender is using, it must be small like a pocket knife or something you would use to peel potatoes... I feel like I need to place this here

According to politicians, we're so distraught about some kid stabbing a bloke with (what may as well be) a butter knife... and it needs to be censored from the entire world... seriously? What a joke!

Make no mistake about it, I do not condone people going around stabbing people, this teenager should of course be punished for his offending. My issue is with the Government's pressing need to censor what really is a 1 out of 10 in terms of terrorism, or even "violent" footage, and not just censor it from Australians, it is positioning itself as a Ministry of Truth for the entire world over censorship of such low level material. They call this content "harmful and violent" but allow me to show you an example of content that is "harmful and violent"

Here is a police officer kneeling on the neck of a man named George Floyd. In the video, Floyd can't breath, Floyd is losing consciousness, pisses himself, and then he dies. Floyd is dead due to police brutality resulting in manslaughter. The video of the arrest was public at the time and was not censored (to my knowledge, I remember having no issues watching the video). Yet this is not considered "harmful and violent" and is freely shared around... It's fine because it doesn't have the "terrorism" label? So if we slap the "terrorism" label on something it suddenly makes it 1000% more egregious? Nahhhhhhhhh.

Tanya Plibersek, some ALP extremist with a claim to fame allegedly including killing koalas, had these words to say about the eSafety Commissioner vs X Corp. matter

Elon Musk doesn't dictate to the Australian Government what we are doing here domestically with our laws." - Tanya Plibersek (Australian Labor Party)

Except that's not what is happening here is it? Elon Musk is not telling Australia what to do, it is in fact the opposite, the Australian Government is demanding that Elon Musk take down posts worldwide, an action which has consequences reaching across the entire world.

Other politicians such as Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have both supplied statements similar to that of Plibersek, condemning Musk, and making the odd suggestion that Musk is trying to contravene Australian law, or that Musk thinks he is "above the law".

It should be noted that Musk's X Corp. has already complied with the removal notice/s issued by the eSafety Commissioner, and the posts that were listed in the notice/s were geo-blocked from being visible by x.com users with Australian accounts. The eSafety Commissioner is not happy with this response, the eSafety Commissioner wants Musk to censor the posts from the entire world, a power that the Australian Government should not have. Why would or should the Australian Government have any power to determine what (for example) Canadian users see while using x.com in Canada?

It's pretty clear that this is an own goal for the Australian Government, why? Well think about the logic here... the Australian Government is saying exactly this: "We don't like these posts, therefore X Corp. must take them down so that the entire world cannot see the posts, to ensure that it is impossible for Australian users to ever see the posts. If X Corp. does not do this, it clearly thinks it is above the law!".

This is an extremely small brain way for the Government to think about it, because think about this scenario:

Australia and China engage in a conflict due to China attempting to reclaim Taiwan (not an unrealistic scenario). The countries go to war, and the Chinese Government starts sending takedown notices to X Corp. seeking the removal of posts by Australian politicians, citing domestic Chinese law, and by the Australian Government's own logic, the Chinese law requiring X Corp. to remove posts from China, will also extend to posts globally (including Australia).

It will therefore be possible for the Chinese Government to create laws which ban posts from Australian politicians, and China will be able to pressure X Corp. into banning all posts from Australian politicians globally because that is the precedent that Australia wants to set. What's good for the goose is good for the gander right?

If Australian politicians want the right to say "we can ban posts from being visible all over the world", then why would that power be exclusive to the Australian Government? Why can't the Chinese Government, the Russian Government, the North Korean Government, why can't any of these "five eyes friendlies" start citing their own domestic laws and having posts removed globally from social media platforms? We'll end up in a global clusterfuck of who is allowed to censor who pretty quickly if this is allowed to continue.

There may even be some countries that ban x.com altogether? Syria, Egypt, Türkiye? Pretty sure I remember periods of unrest in these countries where the Government blocked Twitter (as it was known at the time) from being accessible by the population. In theory, if any of these countries institute a ban, according to the Australian Government this ban would need to be global to stop people from using VPNs and accessing x.com when they should not be accessing it as per local laws of those foreign countries, because "X Corp. cannot be above the law" as they seem to proudly (and stupidly) proclaim... it is an incredibly ignorant position to take on the matter. Australian politicians think their shit doesn't stink and because they demand something, it must be so, and it must apply to the entire planet earth. This is an incredibly important situation that is playing out right now and I don't think people understand the importance of what is going down! It's more than just a video of some kid with a butter knife... much much more is at stake.

Here is a question however, how can the Australian Government overrule overseas legislation? On one hand we have the eSafety Commissioner saying Musk must take posts down as per Australian law. Then on the other hand, in the USA, Musk is bound to the Bill of Rights, which has a first amendment including the protection of expression through speech (A.K.A Freedom of speech). Australia is asking Musk to violate American law to satisfy Australian law, and I don't think I need to point out the obvious do I? This does not end well for the Australian Government... what a bunch of dumb old dinosaurs... how can they possibly think they can censor the world?

What I think will happen? I think ultimately it will be found that Musk's actions of geo-blocking posts from Australian users will satisfy the Australian law requirement. I think it will have to, I just can't see how "@tweetinjules" is going to be able to explain forcing Musk into stripping American's of their inalienable right to freedom of expression because some politicians in Australia have upset feelings, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or whatever the case may be.

If I were Elon Musk I would start banning the accounts of Australian politicians, they want to censor the world? Give them a taste of their own medicine because that is literally what could happen if China passes a law banning all posts from Australian politicians. If Australian politicians expect Musk to apply Australian law globally, then Australia must be prepared for the laws of other countries (such as China) to equally affect us, and I'm sure Musk, clearly a smart man, is going to have fun toying with our 2bit politicians at some point in the future. If this is the path they want to take... they are setting themselves up to be censored by foreign jurisdictions and it is embarrassing how dumb our politicians are that they do not even realise this... it is an own goal of epic proportions.

Update

On the 5/6/24 the eSafety Commissioner lodged a notice of discontinuance to the Federal Court.

Why? Why did the eSafety Commissioner abandon her case? I will tell you why. On 13/5/24 His Honour Justice Kennett of the Federal Court made a judgement on continuation of an interlocutory order requiring X Corp to hide certain posts.

His Honour discontinued the order and provided reasons for his judgement. In my unqualified opinion the most significant part of these reasons for judgement happen around paragraph 50.

In essence His Honour has already found that the eSafety Commissioner's requirements for X Corp. to take down the posts clashes with the sovereignty of other nations. This is exactly the point I make above about Chinese law interfering with what we see on the internet.

It is good to see that such common sense and rational thought exists in the Federal Court, but questions must be asked about the eSafety Commissioner and even all the politicians who were running around like headless chooks because X Corp. would not bend over do what they unlawfully demanded...

The eSafety Commissioner was left with no real option but to discontinue because if she proceeded and His Honour made a judgement affirming his preliminary view above, this would be damaging to the eSafety Commissioner's intentions. Had the judgement been made, it would have provided Meta, TikTok and any other social media platform who is currently complying with the eSafety Commissioner's demands a legal basis to start rejecting these demands, and instead operate in the same manner as X Corp. (geo-blocking as opposed to content removal).

This is why the eSafety Commissioner was forced to discontinue, she couldn't risk this damaging precedent being set by the Court. This leaves a whole lot of egg on the face of the eSafety Commissioner and anyone who was in support of her, as they were and still are thoroughly wrong.