Topline
Elon Musk celebrated a win for his platform X Wednesday after Australia dropped legal action forcing the site to hide videos of a violent church stabbing, ending a bitter feud between the free-speech crusading billionaire and Australia’s government as it considers other ways to challenge the platform’s policies.
Key Facts
“We are heartened to see that freedom of speech has prevailed,” X’s global government affairs team posted, explaining that the case “raised important questions on how legal powers can be used to threaten global censorship of speech.”
The statement follows an announcement from Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, that the regulator had abandoned efforts to force the platform to remove videos of a Sydney church stabbing in April, which Inman Grant said came “after weighing multiple considerations, including litigation across multiple cases.”
The commission has lost several legal fights against the platform over the footage, including a bid last month to extend a court order forcing X to hide videos of the attack until a hearing in June.
Inman Grant said dropping the case is the best way to “achieve the most positive outcome for the online safety of all Australians, especially children.”
She said the commission would now focus its efforts on an Administrative Appeals Tribunal case X launched following the takedown order.
“I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made,” Inman Grant said, adding that the regulator’s sole goal “was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community.”
Crucial Quote
“Freedom of speech is worth fighting for,” Musk said in an X post responding to a comment about the Australian regulator’s decision to drop the case.
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Key Background
Musk is a self-styled defender of free speech and despite substantial criticism and pressure from lawmakers, users and civil society to relax his views, the billionaire has made vehement opposition to censorship a defining feature of his tenure at X. X, alongside many other social media platforms, complied with Australian officials’ requests to remove the videos of the knife attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel while delivering a sermon, but it questioned the limits of Australia’s power and pushed back. While acknowledging Australia’s right to police content and enforce laws within its borders — it hid videos inside Australia — X refused the regulator’s request to take down content worldwide, which it claimed was necessary to stop Australians from seeing it online. X branded such a request as an overreach, a threat to free speech and assault on “the very principles of a free and open internet.” Musk’s stance on the matter brought him into conflict with Australian elites, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who called him an “arrogant billionaire” with a lack of any sense of social responsibility for his company.
Forbes Valuation
Musk is the richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of $208.4 billion. He recently overtook LVMH titan Bernard Arnault and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who are respectively worth an estimated $203.1 billion and $197.2 billion. Musk is a member of the “PayPal Mafia” for his role founding one of the payment service’s predecessors and is best known today for the cohort of companies he leads including Tesla, Neuralink, Boring Co., SpaceX, xAI and X.
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