eSafety commissioner drops court case against X over Sydney church stabbing

The online watchdog has called out Elon Musk for allegedly encouraging retaliation from X users after she took the social media giant to court.

Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says she was subjected to death threats after taking up the fight against social media platform X and its owner Elon Musk.

“He issued a dog whistle to 181 million users around the globe which resulted in death threats directly to me and which resulted in doxxing of my family members, including my three children,” Ms Inman Grant told the ABC.

“With great power comes great responsibility and exercising that restraint in terms of targeting a regulator who is here to protect the citizens of Australia is really beyond the pale.

“But it is not surprising. This is his modus operandi. I will not be cowered but those threats.”

ustralia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant says she received death threats after launching action against X. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Earlier on Wednesday, Ms Inman Grant announced she had dropped the legal fight against X over its refusal to remove videos depicting a stabbing attack against a Sydney bishop.

The eSafety Commission was attempting to force X to remove videos of footage of an alleged terror attack in which Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed during a live-streamed sermon.

X Corp initially agreed to “geoblock” the content, which restricted local access, but claimed the Australian government lacked authority to force a global ban.

Despite setting a date for the court hearing, Ms Inman Grant announced on Wednesday that those proceedings would be halted.

In a statement, eSafety said it had decided to “consolidate action” concerning what it called class 1 content in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Elon Musk vowed to fight eSafety’s global take-down order. Picture: NCA NewsWire / AFP POOL / Leon Neal

“We now welcome the opportunity for a thorough and independent merits review of my decision to issue a removal notice to X Corp by the tribunal,” Ms Grant said.

“Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community.”

Ms Grant said the online watchdog “considered this option (abandoning legal action) likely to achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children”.

eSafety took X Corp to court in an attempt to force the platform to take down about 60 instances of footage from the alleged attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel at the Wakely church on April 15.

A temporary order barring the content from being displayed was later thrown out by the Federal Court, with parallel proceedings launched by X Corp in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant said it would focus on the Administrative Appeals Tribunal case. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Standing by eSafety’s take-down order, Ms Grant said the key issue “was the ease with which children” could access violent content and she expected “reasonable companies” to take action.

“By its own admission, X Corp routinely does … X Corp said it took action on 226,000 items of content following reports of illegality and ‘globally deleted 40,000 items of content’,” Ms Grant said.

“Other major social media platforms and search engines complied with our (take-down) requests and removal notices, including Meta, Microsoft, Google, Snap, TikTok, Reddit and Telegram.

“So, it was a reasonable expectation when we made our request to remove extremely graphic video of an attack that X Corp would take action in line with these publicly stated policies and practices.”

X Corp had earlier vowed to fight the global take-down order, with the site’s billionaire owner, Mr Musk, blasting the “Australian censorship commissioner” who was “demanding global bans”.

In a statement shortly after news of the discontinuation, X Corp’s Global Government Affairs account said it welcomed the decision by eSafety and that “freedom of speech has prevailed”.

“We welcome the news that the eSafety Commissioner is no longer pursuing legal action against X seeking the global removal of content that does not violate X’s rules,” the statement said.

“This case has raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech, and we are heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed.”