Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant conceded defeat in a weeks-long effort to force X (formerly Twitter) to censor content she didn’t approve of across the globe.
On June 5, Grant dropped her Federal Court complaint against X after a federal judge blocked her application for the extension of an injunction against the social media platform. Grant still has a separate ongoing case against X-owner Elon Musk over the same content. Musk celebrated the win in a post on X, “Freedom of speech is worth fighting for.” Notably, Meta, Microsoft, Google, Snap, TikTok, Reddit and Telegram all caved to Australian government pressure to block the video for the entire world.
After Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of was stabbed during Mass at Assyrian Orthodox Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakely, Australia, the Australian eSafety Commissioner demanded that X and other platforms censor the video of the terrorist attack.
However, Musk refused to take the content down under pressure from the Australian government, but unfortunately censored the video for Australian users of the platform. While the commissioner was trying to dictate what the entire world has a right to see, the victim in the video she was trying to suppress — Bishop Emmanuel — spoke out in favor of free speech.
Bishop Emmanuel, having lost sight in his right eye, took to the pulpit and told his congregation, “Every human being has the right to their freedom of speech and freedom of religion, every human being, and for us to say that free speech is dangerous, that free speech cannot be possible in a democratic country, I’m yet to fathom this.”
Twitter Files author Michael Shellenberger repudiated the rest of Silicon Valley in a post celebrating the eSafety Commissioner’s defeat. “Free Speech Victory! Only Elon Musk's X stood up to the censors in Australia, and now they've won,” Shellenberger wrote. He went on to explain the struggle between Musk and the eSafety Commissioner and say that “we owe Musk a debt of gratitude for fighting for free speech.”
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