Australian PM labels Musk 'arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law' | Hacker News Reader

Australian PM labels Musk 'arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law'

theguardian.com

10 pointstempestn19 comments

I agree with the categorization, but have to also agree with Musk that it's not tenable for a single country to be able to censor a piece of content for the entire world.

Whether you approve of this censoring or not, it is law within Australia.

If in a conjunction of services a loophole emerges, the censor needs to find someone to eliminate that loophole. Now, Australia can either prohibit encrypted connections abroad or ask X to censor one piece of content that nobody in their right mind should want to see.

What would do more harm to free speech? The quote "a bloke who’s chosen ego and showing violence over common sense" isn't too unfitting.

I would have just removed it. What else is there to discuss.

Otherwise X will become the new steak & cheese of our time.

But it's still an interesting topic. I would like to bring in a different example: Porn platforms and EU regulations for online child safety. So xhamster, youp... and xvideoz are mandated to have an age verification.

If I would be one of them, I couldn't care less. Ok, I would check it first how much it will cost me in case of doing it and in cases of European sanctions.. if it's not my all, I wouldn't comply to. Why should X comply to Australia? They can try to ban it, but they won't - to much of the very same politicians are using X actively :)

So I see no danger for X in not complying. That's international way of business doing.

The whole situation wouldn't have happened if the posting of "the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel" would violate Twitter's terms of service.

Since it obviously doesn't, these situations will continue to happen. Just because somewhere in the world there are people who have no strong relation to a person in some violent content, in one country it might be an important figure making the content carry much more weight.

Looking forward to see how this service is supposed to become the "everything app" including financial services, if it's already failing at such basic compliance steps...

It's not "alleged" if the event happened and the video purports it

Beside of the fact that I was quoting the article (!), that's the criteria the video should meet to violate the terms of a service

(I don't care if some authority has confirmed that a person was actually stabbed, it should be sufficient to be removed for allegedly showing that event)

This comes across as a cheap ad hominem attack on a serious topic but unfortunately that's a common tactic.

Everyone agrees that Australia can censor what they want within their borders (and X is blocking the content within Australia). But here they have issued an injunction for a global takedown, and I think it is right for X to push back against this.

Here he goes again, selectively calling out censorship from governments he doesn't like.

He is more than happy to quietly censor on behalf of India and Saudi Arabia! Just not Brazil or Australia.

Why the double standard? He wants pliable governments aligned to his thinking and he's using X to achieve that.

Some of the Australian "reporting" on this is low key amusing;

Elon Musk – Dead at 52 – Says There Is No Need for Misinformation Laws

https://theshovel.com.au/2024/04/23/elon-musk-dead-at-52-mis...

as it's as much about the X-Twatter waves of bullshit that stir up riots as it is about glorifying the incident with explicit readily available footage.

I'm looking forward to some more deeply barbed takes that reflect on the very selective response that you've called out.

On what legal basis could Australia possibly expect to control what Twitter does in other countries?

I'm not sure whether there is a legal twitter entity in Australia, but it may not need a legal basis to control. In this case, it's sufficient to have a legal basis to censor, no matter the path Twitter users in Australia choose to use in order to access it. If Twitter does not want its whole service to be censored in a country, they may have to comply with legal requirements in that country. Nothing new here. It's the same as with EU DSA, GDPR and so on.

> eSafety “will continue to use its suite of powers under the Online Safety Act to protect Australians from serious online harms, including extreme violent content”

So in this case that's the Australian's Online Safety Act.

The legal basis is easy. The issue is obviously enforcement, so realistically this only works for countries powerful enough to put enough pressure on the target company.

Australian law and courts has no jurisdiction over what happens in American or European data centers, so long as those bits never deliver to Australia.

Australian law and courts have jurisdiction over whatever Australian law says they have.

Again, the issue is enforcement.

Thats not how sovereignty works.

That's how the law and jurisdiction work. Jurisdiction is defined by law.

Sovereignty is what complicates enforcement.

The law, as implemented by people, who are not stupid, will note that a VPN is all that's needed to access stuff as if outside the country, rendering county-specific blocks laughably useless, and require that stricter measures be put in place, under whatever threat they can manage.

The people that want this ban are, for all their performative public facing statments, not altogether stupid.

Despite the claim for a ban the desired end goal is what is effectively a bloody great speed bump that slows the transmission of bullshit when fire starts in a theatre.

What very rapidly happened in Australia very soom after the stabbing in the church was a flood of BS claims and counter claims that had no truth to them but served to inflame a crowd which surrounded the church demanding retribution and the immediate lynching of either A) the Muslim responsible, or B) the Jewish man responsible ...

It's fairly widely understood in Australia and, surprisingly, supported on both sides of the political divide (with one or two specific exceptions) than total bans aren't achievable but legal boundaries can and often will slow the speed of yelling "Fire!!" in a theatre.

While there are few real absolute in life it is generally the case that most of the people that can operate a VPN aren't getting sucked into bloody stupid real life pitch fork waving.

Although it's certainly the case that some of those that can operate a VPN will be turds that enjoy pouring gasoline on a spark.

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