Elon Musk’s X threatens to sue Australian government over anti-transgender post

The tech billionaire’s social media network says it will ‘protect its user’s right to free speech’ as it threatens to sue the Australian government over a post that made disparaging comments about a transgender activist.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant with Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra in Februrary. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Elon Musk’s social media platform X has threatened to sue the Australian government as it faces a fine of up to $800,000 over a post that made disparaging comments about transgender activist Teddy Cook, declaring it will “protect its user’s right to free speech”.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has removed the post written by Canadian Chris Elston, who is known as ‘Billboard Chris’ and says he has “decided to take a stand against gender ideology”, which he has described as “pseudo-religious movement”

But the post targeting Mr Cook – who was part of a panel that advised the World Health Organisation on developing guidelines for the health of trans and gender diverse people – was reshared thousands of times. This prompted the Australian eSafety Commissioner to take action, which X said it would challenge.

It follows a separate $610,500 penalty from eSafety last year after it accused X of not responding adequately to a question about how it tackled the proliferation of child sexual abuse.

X has not paid that fine and has sought a judicial review – a move that is now likely to replicate over Elston’s post.

“Earlier this week, X was ordered by the Australian E-Safety Commissioner, subject to an approximately $800,000 AUD fine, to remove a user’s post. The post had criticised an individual appointed by the World Health Organisation to serve as an expert on transgender issues,” X Global Government Affairs said in a statement.

“X is withholding the post in Australia in compliance with the order but intends to file a legal challenge to the order to protect its user’s right to free speech.”

Elon Musk said it was “very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech” when he lobbed a bid to take over Twitter.

An eSafety spokesman said it was upholding laws to prevent online harm.

“Tech platforms do not always consistently enforce their own rules or hateful conduct policies, which is why Parliament voted to establish the Adult Cyber Abuse Scheme as part of the Online Safety Act 2021 so that eSafety could serve as a safety net for Australian adults facing the most grievous forms of online harassment and abuse,” the spokesman said.

He did not comment on the specifics of the X case, but outlined the threshold for eSafety to take action.

“The Act defines adult cyber abuse as material targeting a particular Australian adult that is both intended to cause serious harm, and is also menacing, harassing or offensive in all circumstances.

“If the material only meets one of these two criteria, for example, if the post is offensive but is found to not be intended to cause serious harm, it will not be considered adult cyber abuse under the Act. eSafety makes its regulatory decisions impartially and in accordance with the legislative criteria prescribed in the Act.”

It comes as Harry Potter author JK Rowling avoided prosecution under Scotland’s hate crime law.

Rowling had mocked 10 high profile biological men – some of whom were sex offenders – who have adopted a female identity. The posts were seen by more than 11 million people and retweeted 26,000 times.

But police in Scotland say they would take no action against her. This is despite a new Scottish law making it an offence if people are “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” on the grounds of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics.

Musk bought Twitter in a $US44bn deal in late 2022, later renaming it X. He said at the time that he was motivated by upholding the principle of free speech for the “future of civilisation”, and not making money, declaring he was “obsessed with the truth”.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

“It’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech … Twitter has become the de facto town square, so it’s important (that there is) the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law,” he said at a TED conference in Vancouver in 2022.

“My strong sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilisation. I don’t care about the economics at all.”

Ms Inman Grant said last month that under X’s new leadership, it had cut 80 per cent of its safety engineers, 50 per cent of its content moderators and 80 per cent of its public policy teams engaged with governments.

She issued X an initial $610,500 infringement notice last September. Civil penalty ­proceedings against the company began in the Federal Court in ­December. And Ms Inman Grant said the company now faced steeper penalties.

“The important thing to remember here is it was a fairly minor infringement notice that they could have paid for,” she said. “They could be fined, depending on what the court finds, up to $782,000 a day from the time they were found to be out of compliance, which was March last year. This could be in the tens of millions of dollars.”

Ms Inman Grant has also warned other tech giants, including Meta, Google, Telegram, WhatsApp and Reddit that they would face tens of millions of dollars in penalties if they failed to act on terrorist, violent extremism and child abuse material, amid concerns that generative artificial intelligence is being weaponised to spread hate and disinformation.