Australia’s online safety regulator has expressed “great sadness” after it was revealed a British teenager who fatally stabbed three children in the UK had earlier searched for a video of a Sydney church stabbing on social media that her office had attempted to have taken down.
An eSafety spokesperson on Friday said in attempting to have X remove the Sydney video it “was guided by its mission to protect our community from harmful online material, including material that may severely traumatise, manipulate or radicalise vulnerable people, especially children and the young”.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, was convicted and sentenced to 52 years in prison in the UK on Thursday for murdering the three girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July 2024 and the attempted murder of 10 others.
Six minutes before Rudakubana left home ahead of the killings he searched for a video of the April 2024 Sydney church attack in which bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly stabbed while livestreaming a sermon.
In Friday’s statement, eSafety noted: “Research and the experience of law enforcement in Australia and internationally has shown a clear link between extreme, graphic violent material and harm to children, not to mention instances of real-world violence or attempted violence.”
The Sydney attack led to a high-profile fight between the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, and Elon Musk’s X after the social media site was ordered to remove 65 tweets containing the videos from its platform under Online Safety Act powers, and a wide public debate over the line between censorship and keeping people safe online.
The commissioner had argued the videos represented extremely violent material that was prohibited in Australia and sought to have the posts removed globally.
Google, Microsoft, Snap and TikTok removed the videos from their platform at the time when informally requested by eSafety.
The regulator on Friday said: “eSafety issued notices on 16 April 2024 requiring them [Meta and X] to remove the material under provisions of Australia’s Online Safety Act.”
“eSafety was satisfied with Meta’s response, however, X Corp chose not to remove the video from its platform. Instead, the company geo-blocked to Australia, leaving the material accessible on its platform, including to many users in this country with a VPN.”
eSafety then took X to the federal court while X appealed against the ruling in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
X accused eSafety at the time of pursuing global censorship and vowed the company would “robustly challenge this unlawful and dangerous approach in court”.
Emmanuel himself provided an affidavit for X in the case arguing the video should remain online.
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Both cases were eventually dropped by eSafety, with X declaring “free speech has prevailed” when the federal court case was dropped.
eSafety had argued it was best to await the outcome of a review of the Online Safety Act due in 2024.
Far-right riots in England and Northern Ireland in July following the Southport murders were fuelled by misinformation that the Southport attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker, spread on social media, including X. The Guardian reported at the time that accounts with more than 100,000 followers on X were falsely sharing such claims.
Later in 2024, Musk also labelled the Australian government “fascists” over the bill to force social media companies to crack down on misinformation and disinformation. The bill was ultimately abandoned by the government, after it failed to win support from the Coalition or the crossbench to pass the bill in the Senate.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, was handed the review of the Online Safety Act late last year but has yet to respond or release the report.
“eSafety looks forward to the contribution [the government’s response] will make towards resolving some of the legal and jurisdictional issues these matters have raised,” the eSafety spokesperson said.
X was contacted for comment.
