The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has opposed Tech billionaire Elon Musk after he called the government in Canberra “fascists” because of a planned law against misinformation by online services such as X. Online platforms have “a social responsibility,” Albanese said on Saturday. “If Mr. Musk doesn’t understand that, that says more about him than it does about my government.”
The renewed dispute was triggered by a law introduced by the government on Thursday “to combat misinformation”. This law provides for far-reaching powers to impose fines on tech giants amounting to five percent of their annual turnover for violations of online security obligations. “Fascists,” Musk wrote in response on his online service X.
Musk has run into trouble in some countries because of Platform X
Musk’s long-standing dispute with the Australian government appears to be revived. In response to Musk’s contribution to the Australian broadcaster Channel Nine, the Minister for Public Services, Bill Shorten, accused Musk of having “more positions on free speech than the Kama Sutra”.
Recommended editorial content
Here you will find external content selected by our editors that enriches the article with additional information. You can display or hide the external content with one click.
I agree to the external content being displayed to me. This means that personal data can be transmitted to third-party platforms. You can find more information about this in the data protection settings. You can find these at the very bottom of our page in the footer, so that you can manage or revoke your settings at any time.
If it is in Musk’s “commercial interest,” he will pose as a “champion of free speech.” “And if he doesn’t like it, he will shut it all down,” Shorten added.
The Australian Internet regulator had already taken legal action against X in the first half of the year for publishing videos and audio recordings of a knife attack. However, a federal court ruled in X’s favor on May 13 and the regulator dropped its legal action against the platform.
Musk, a right-wing Trump supporter and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” has already clashed with politicians and digital rights groups around the world.
In Brazil, X was effectively blocked after the company ignored several court orders. Musk then called the judge in charge, Alexandre de Moraes, an “evil dictator posing as a judge.”
On Friday, the Brazilian Supreme Court said Moraes had ordered the transfer of the equivalent of 2.97 million euros in blocked funds from accounts belonging to X and the Starlink satellite internet service, which is also owned by Musk, to the state treasury.
According to the court, this is intended to pay the fines incurred by X. Moraes had previously frozen the assets of the two companies. (AFP)
