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Elon Musk’s social media platform refused to remove a video that Oxel Rudakubana watched a few minutes before assassinating three young children, despite numerous requests from the Australian and British authorities.
The Australian Internet regulator, Esafety, said on Friday that he noted with “a great sadness” that the video – which shows the violent stab of a bishop in Sydney in April – had been watched by the killer on X, Even if the regulator had requested that the equipment be removed from the platform for months before Southport attack last summer.
Immediately after the Australian attack, companies such as Google, Microsoft, Snap and Tiktok “acted quickly to cooperate with Esafty and guarantee that Wakeley’s stabbed video is not accessible from their platforms. Some of these companies have taken additional proactive measures to reduce the propagation of the material, “said the regulator. “X Corp has chosen not to remove the video from its platform.”
Video images of the assassination of a bishop in a western church of Sydney circulated online in April, but X geoblooked the images until April. AustraliaThis means that people elsewhere in the world and local VPN users could continue to see the violent attack.
The British Interior Minister Yvette Cooper said this week that the government was contacting X directly to ask her to remove the video from the platform. “Companies should not take advantage of the accommodation of content that puts the lives of children in danger,” she told the House of Commons.
Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to life on Thursday with a minimum of 52 years in prison after recognizing the murder of three young girls during a dance class on the theme of Taylor Swift in Southport.
Musk tweeted several times following the murders, accusing British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of “giving priority to mosques rather than British girls in their dance lessons”. Musk also amplified the tweets of the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson who claimed that “Muslims run in the streets without being worried by the police, attacking any non-Muslim”. These interventions led to accusations that he fueled the tensions that led to riots in British cities last summer.
Friday, Musk shared an article on the murders of Southport, saying “never forget”.
But so far he has refused to intervene to force his business to remove the video that Rudakubana has watched, and the video still circulates on X Friday afternoon.
The Financial Times contacted X to ask him why he had not deleted the video, but received no response.
The court in charge of the Rudakubana case learned this week that a search of a Lenovo tablet found at home had shown that he had deleted the entire navigation history, with the exception of a research carried out the attack day. Six minutes before leaving to commit the murders, he had searched for X “Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbed”.
When the police did the same excavation on X during her investigation, she discovered that it led to publications containing images of the Sydney attack three months earlier.
The accusation also presented the online profiles and the identifiers of Rudakubana’s social networks in court, including its X account. Friday, its X account – which is protected so that only its subscribers can see its publications – had not been deleted.
The Australian regulator sought to bring legal action to try to force X to comply with a decision to complete the complete video suppression in April, a decision that divided the country on the question of whether the government suppressed freedom to ‘Expression or if he was right to protect social media users from harmful threats. and violent content.
Musk criticized the decision, accusing Esafty’s “commissioner” of trying to censor the Internet.
This caused a furious reaction from the country’s politicians, including Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, who said he was “distressing” that X opposes the order to withdraw the video and criticized the Position of the billionaire.
However, a The court has chosen not to extend an injunction On the broadcast of the video on the grounds that X had taken “reasonable measures” to prevent the broadcast of video in Australia. The case had been considered a potential test to determine whether local regulations could be applied worldwide.
The electronic security commissioner abandoned his file in June awaiting an examination of Australian laws on online security.
Additional Hannah Murphy report
