Elon Musk has been targeted by yet another authoritarian government for his company X’s reluctance to censor political content.
In an April 23 interview with Sky News, Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie appeared to threaten Elon Musk over his well-known advocacy for free speech and the way his company X handles political content on its platform, specifically X’s refusal to censor videos of recent attacks in Australia, contradicting the orders of the country’s eSafety commission.
Lambie engaged in a vitriolic spree against the tech mogul and considerably blackened his character.
“So when it comes to the tech billionaire, like I’ve already said, I think he’s a social media nob with no social conscience,” Lambie said. “He has absolutely no social conscience.”
The senator then proceeded to issue explicit threats against Musk, advocating for him to be imprisoned.
“Someone like that should be in jail, and the key be thrown away,” Lambie asserted. “That bloke should not have a right to be out there on his own ideology platform and creating hatred, you know, showing all this stuff out there to our kids and all the rest.”
Australian politicians want to shut down X and imprison Elon Musk because free speech is a danger to their fragile democracy that’s run by fragile, pathetic people. You couldn’t make this up. pic.twitter.com/mEBLqMtO6f
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 23, 2024
In another interview, Lambie made her threats even more explicit and suggested that the Australian government should introduce new rules to target X.
“And quite frankly, the bloke [sic] should be jailed, and the sooner we can bring rules in or do something about these sorts of game-playing with their social media, the better off we’re going to be.”
Lambie did not immediately respond to MRC Free Speech America’s request for comment. She is not the first Australian political figure to try to criticize the tech mogul for protecting the free expression of X users. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has also taken issue with X’s handling of what he terms “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
“By and large, people responded appropriately to the calls by the [eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant],” Albanese recently commented. “They stand, I think … I find it extraordinary that X chose not to comply and trying to argue their case.”
Albanese appeared to rationalize his stance against the rights of X users by arguing that it was simply the will of Australians.
“We know, I think, overwhelmingly Australians want misinformation and disinformation to stop,” he said.
The controversy comes after X was ordered by Grant on April 16 to take down two videos of stabbings.
One video depicted a bishop and a priest being stabbed during a live-streamed mass, and the other video showed a knife-wielding assailant killing six at a mall. X refused to comply with the request because its Global Government Affairs team argued that the request was not within the scope of Australian law nor did the videos violate X’s own policies.
As reported by Time Magazine, the orders required X to make the videos inaccessible even to users outside Australia or face a fine of $785,000 AUD (about $500,000 USD).
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on so-called hate speech and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
