Elon Musk accuses Australia of censorship after court bans violent video | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk accuses Australia of censorship after court bans violent video

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I think it's outrageous that my government seems to think they have the right to censor, worldwide, anything that originates from Australia. Say something happens in the West Bank that Israel doesn't like anyone seeing, do they get to decide that nobody can see it? Or the Taliban does something they want to keep quiet, do they get that right? What about Russia, or China?

Maybe next we can try bringing back extraterritoriality - for everyone! We can get the right to decide that anyone, anywhere who commits anything that would be considered a crime in Australia should get extradited over here for a trial.

> I think it's outrageous that my government seems to think they have the right to censor, worldwide, anything that originates from Australia.

Really it's the US Government who thinks they have the right, have a look at who our eSafety commissioner is and where she's worked before

Uh… de facto reality here; Israel, the Taliban, China, and Russia are all, currently, very effectively exercising their power along those lines, whether or not they have the “right” to do so.

The US is also extremely good at censoring, worldwide, what it wants to, and it’s been using its soft and hard power since its inception to do so. Insofar as that’s kept nuclear weapons and chemical and biological weapons from proliferating into the hands of those who would use them there’s an argument that the means can justify the ends, and it’s precisely that argument that the Australian government is trying to test here.

And yeah, the solution is an extraterritorial court with the power to adjudge the limits of inter- and intra-territorial laws and who can promulgate and who gets to and how they can enforce them. Can’t see Elon helping build that, mind.

Nah. The Taliban aren't letting Musk know what he can and can't publish in the US.

In their case they prevent him from publishing anything they don’t want the world outside their borders to know about by killing the video at its source (and its source). Didn’t say you needed to make legal threats to effectively censor outside your own territory.

An interesting development in Australia, where the government has been ordering censorship of social media content showing a recent stabbing incident. What’s especially odd about the court order in Australia is that they are demanding that Twitter/X censor content globally, not just within Australia:

> The regulator’s lawyer, Christopher Tran, had argued Monday in court that geoblocking Australia did not meet the definition of removal of the footage under Australian law.

As for Twitter/X’s response:

> X said the Australian regulator had demanded the platform “globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000.”

> “X believes that eSafety’s order was not within the scope of Australian law and we complied with the directive pending a legal challenge,” the Global Government Affairs account said. “While X respects the right of a country to enforce its laws within its jurisdiction, the eSafety Commissioner does not have the authority to dictate what content X’s users can see globally.”

> “We will robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court,” it added.

Personally I think the normalization of governments censoring speech and content in allegedly democratic countries is scary, and opens the door for bigger and more abusive censorship regimes. Another recent example was in Brazil, where a single Supreme Court judge has been ordering censorship of X/Twitter users and also adding gag orders so that censorship is not visible to the public.

Censorship isn’t inherently a bad thing, and the freedom to speak anything isn’t inherently good. Learning to self-censor is one of the first steps in becoming a functioning adult in a social species (which we certainly — but perhaps excluding Elon, as it appears there may be some serious developmental or other brain damage involved there — are), and where and when governments exist they must enforce some level of censorship within and across borders in order to maintain safety (and even more mundane things, like the operation of copyright and contracts and treaties and to allow for systems like peer review to function). The problem isn’t censorship, the problem is censorship that is malign and seeks to harm, vs that which is benign and seeks to protect from harm, and where precisely to draw that line.

Now, I don’t trust the Australian government’s ideas or motivations enough to want them to draw that line for the world… but I trust Elon Musk’s ideas on motivations on where to draw it way less.

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