Elon Musk's X wins ‘free speech' fight against eSafety Commissioner
On Tuesday, the Administrative Review Tribunal struck out an order by Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant, which demanded that Elon Musk's X remove a post that insulted a transgender Australian man.
The order was made in Mach 2024 and relates to an X post about trans rights activist Teddy Cook, who is director of community health at NSW health organisation ACON.
Chris Elston, known on X as Billboard Chris, misgendered and insulted Cook, equated transgender identity with mental illness, and linked to an article suggesting Cook was 'too smutty' for intergovernmental work.
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At the time, X complied with an order from Inman-Grant to hide the post from Australian users, but later lodged an appeal against the removal notice.
In his ruling, the tribunal's deputy president Damien O'Donovan said he was not satisfied that the post met 'the statutory definition of cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult'.
In Australia, if online content is serious enough and the service or platform does not help the person affected, the eSafety Commissioner can direct the platform to remove it.
The statutory definition is that the offensive content in question must target a specific Australian adult (over 18 years old) and be both intended to cause serious harm, and menacing, harassing or offensive in all the circumstances.
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