‘It’s for your own good’ isn’t a good enough argument, PM

A two-tier approach to social media standards, to morality, is not governing for all Australians, as we were promised and is unlikely to end up where we want to go.

It has to be a joke, right? PM Anthony Albanese is demanding X boss, Elon Musk, take down content on servers that extend beyond our jurisdiction, thereby attempting to dictate what the rest of the world can and can’t see. Picture: Supplied

It’s comedy hour in Australia, folks. Haven’t you heard? The global political stage has morphed into a weird, sort of poor man’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Australia is front and centre, cracking all the gags. The biggest joke of all is, of course, the much touted, over-inflated, chest-beating, confected conflict between Anthony Albanese and Elon Musk, the boss of X Corp (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter).

It centres on footage of a stabbing attack on Assyrian orthodox Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel that occurred during a live ­stream of one of his sermons at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, in Sydney’s west. A teenager has been arrested and charged in relation to the incident and cannot be identified.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner demanded the footage be taken down because it’s violent. Musk joined the fray with some reasonable arguments about censorship, and of course our Prime Minister couldn’t help but weigh in, and the entire matter is now being duked out in the Federal Court.

Footage of a stabbing attack on Assyrian orthodox Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel that occurred during a live ­stream of one of his sermons at Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, in Sydney’s west, is at the centre of the Albanese, Musk conflict.

Musk and X say that geo-blocking (restricting access to this footage for those within Australia) should be enough. Our government says nobody should be able to see it. Literally, nobody. Take it down, remove it from US-based servers. It’s a joke, right? The Australian Prime Minister (not short of domestic issues on which to focus) picking a fight with Musk.

It reminds me a little bit of when prime minister Tony Abbott waxed lyrical about shirt-fronting Vladimir Putin. It should also be noted that X is a niche platform, is not real life, and most people in the real world are smart enough to give it a wide berth. Me? I hang around for breaking news and a quality mix of cute animal content, satire and posts about Italy.

It has to be a joke, right? Australia’s government demanding X take down content on servers that extend beyond our jurisdiction, thereby attempting to dictate what the rest of the world can and can’t see? I mean, it shouldn’t come as any surprise because for six months the government has been busy lecturing Israel (from the safety of the other side of the world) on how to deal with terrorists who invade the country, slaughter hundreds in the space of a few hours, take another couple of hundred hostage and brag about it.

In this respect, Australia is the epitome of no-experience expert trying to tell everyone how it’s done. By definition, an exceptionally bad joke.

Australia is the epitome of no-experience expert trying to tell everyone how it’s done. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

For my sins, I spent some time wandering around the website of the eSafety Commissioner this week. It’s straight from central marketing. Lots of happy faces that simply radiate “Look at me, I’m happily, politely and safely engaging on the interwebs and I have the government to thank for it!”. But scratch the surface just a teeny bit and you’d be forgiven if your blood runs a little cold.

The website proudly spouts that Australia’s is the world’s first government agency committed to keeping its citizens safer online. Keep us safe? The last time a federal government pledged to keep us safe, it inflicted catastrophic damage on the mental health of a generation and locked Australian citizens out of their own country for two years. And that’s just the start. That alone should raise a thousand red flags.

Let me be really clear. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be standards around social media platforms. I’m certainly not saying that tech giants should be above the law. What I am saying is that this kind of censorship – you know, the one wrapped in the promise that it’s for our own good – never ends up anywhere we want to go. Moreover, the question we all demand an answer to is the most important one: who gets to decide what’s safe? Who gets to decide what is and isn’t OK to view? What needs to be taken down, and what content, while confronting, is important in the context of access to unfettered information? Who gets to decide where the line is drawn?

Who gets to decide what’s safe for viewing? Picture: iStock

In short, who is watching the watcher? Imagine a scenario in which a politbureau of content Karens gets to decide what is and isn’t damaging. Information especially curated, direct from party HQ. What a wild and absolutely terrifying idea.

This really is the heart of the broader issue that we’re grappling with around big tech, and the rules that do and should govern these platforms. It’s not the runny nose, it’s the virus that causes it that we need to be looking at.

And please forgive me for not trusting that any government (and today we’re talking about the one in power) actually has our best interests at heart when it comes to information control.

Let me offer some examples.

The government doesn’t want you to see the vision of Emmanuel being stabbed. But it had no problem with footage of Shani Louk’s broken, semi-naked body being paraded through the streets of Gaza. It said nothing when footage of violent mobs at the Sydney Opera House were rampaging on the night of October 9 last year. Was that harmless, was it violent? Of course it was but apparently not enough for any action.

The Albanese government had no problem with footage posted on social media of Shani Louk’s broken, semi-naked body being paraded through the streets of Gaza. Picture: Supplied

Footage of the Bondi Junction terrorist was not taken down and nobody demanded it should be. Vision of a crazed man, running through Westfield Bondi Junction brandishing a knife apparently was not harmful enough to deal with. Nor was footage of the killer’s lifeless body after having been shot dead.

Neither Albanese nor the office of the eSafety Commissioner, to the best of my knowledge, has gone to court to take down the myriad sexually explicit content available on X. There is no doubt as to the harm of this material.

Apart from the sexual stuff, I don’t believe in taking down any of the content I’ve mentioned here. What I’m trying to point to here is the regular and demonstrable two-tiered approach to morality, to standards.

A two-speed approach to what, under the leadership of this federal government and most of the states, will and won’t be accepted. What we’ve seen and are seeing is that it’s based on certain values and faiths, and not others. This is not governing for all Australians, as we were promised.

There’s no place on social media for harmful or violent content. Nobody can argue with this. But the problem is that when you dismantle the present arguments being put and solutions being proposed, it’s about nothing more than censorship.

So spare me the “It’s for your own good” routine. I didn’t buy it then and I sure don’t buy it now.