X pushes back at order to hide Sydney church stabbing footage as US user reposts video
Social media platform X says it has complied with Australian federal court orders to remove footage of the Wakeley church stabbing, even as the video itself appeared in a post directly below the announcement, visible to users in Australia.
The company says it complied with the law by “restricting” some posts for Australian users. It also argues that the posts should not have been banned in Australia at all, and that the Australian government should not be able to censor what users posted in other countries.
The eSafety commissioner last week asked X to take down footage of the recent attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, due to its graphic content.
On Monday, the federal court ordered Elon Musk’s X to hide posts containing videos of the Sydney church stabbing from users globally. The Australian federal police told the court of fears the video could be used to encourage people to join a terrorist organisation or undertake a terrorist act.
X, formerly Twitter, was asked by the regulator to remove 65 individual tweets containing video of the attack.
On Monday, a lawyer representing the eSafety commissioner said in court that X had already geoblocked the posts, meaning people in Australia could not see the tweets, but argued this was not sufficient.
Many of the tweets remained accessible outside Australia, or from Australia via a VPN.
On Wednesday, the court extended the interim injunction, ordering the posts be hidden from view until 5pm on 10 May 2024, ahead of another hearing.
Late Thursday evening, X’s official Global Government Affairs account posted a statement saying it “believes it has complied with the notice issued by eSafety, and with Australian law, by restricting all the posts at issue in Australia”.
However, an X user, on a blue-tick verified account apparently based in New Hampshire in the US, posted a reply to the company’s statement soon afterwards, in which they embedded the footage of the attack.
The post appeared directly below X’s official post and was both viewable and playable to Australian users.
X said in its statement on Thursday night that the original posts should not have been banned in Australia at all, as the company believes the “content within the posts does not encourage or provoke violence and fits within the Australian legislation’s category that permits content that can be reasonably considered as part of public discussion or debate”.
The company also opposed the demand to remove the content globally from the platform.
“[W]e believe that no government should possess such authority,” the statement said. “X believes in respecting the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, and also believes that governments should not be able to censor what citizens of other countries see online, and that regulators should stay within the boundaries of the law. We believe these principles are important to defend and we will continue to do so.”
On Wednesday, the eSafety commissioner issued a statement on the federal court order, saying: “While it may be difficult to eradicate damaging content from the internet entirely, particularly as users continue to repost it, eSafety requires platforms to do everything practical and reasonable to minimise the harm it may cause to Australians and the Australian community.”
The reply post to X’s statement that contained the video in question was no longer visible to some users shortly after Guardian Australia’s enquiries to X and the eSafety commissioner about it.
On Thursday, the Australian federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, appeared to side with X and the company’s owner, Elon Musk, saying Australia “can’t be the internet police of the world”, that federal law should not influence what content can be seen overseas, and that the eSafety commissioner’s demand for global removal of the footage was “silly”.
X has been approached for comment.
