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The tech giant gets to name-calling as Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones calls the free-speech absolutist’s response “crackpot stuff”.
Surprising absolutely no one, Elon Musk – owner of blue-tick emporium and social media platform X – has some strong opinions about Australia’s recently announced bill aimed at curbing the spread of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms.
Responding to a Reuters post on X about the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s new powers to fine social media platforms 5 per cent of their global revenue for failing to comply with its regulations, Musk said just one word: “Fascists.”
Clearly, Musk reserves the right to spread misinformation as a virtue, especially considering his recent sharing of politically motivated misinformation depicting presidential hopeful Kamala Harris wearing a bizarre communist uniform.
The image – created by Musk’s own Grok AI image generator – was accompanied by Musk saying, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit?!”
Neither the post nor the image were marked as containing any AI-generated content. It should also be pointed out that it was Harris’ opponent, Donald Trump, who has said he plans to abuse his presidential powers on day one of his term.
But don’t let pesky things like the truth get in the way of your daily quota of shit-posting.
Both Musk’s own post and that of Reuters’ were replied to by a vast number of blue-tick accounts very much in support of Musk’s views.
“This is all to destroy X,” said one. “Every single one of these laws didn’t exist prior to Elon taking over X.”
“Australia’s latest censorship plans are not only draconian but also a grave assault on free speech,” said another. “The idea of imposing fines of up to 5 per cent of global revenue on internet platforms for failing to prevent the spread of so-called ‘misinformation’ online is nothing short of Orwellian.”
However, speaking on ABC News Breakfast, Jones was not having a bar of it, referring to Musk’s commentary as “crackpot stuff”.
Jones said the matter was about Australia’s “sovereignty”.
“And whether it’s the Australian government or any other government around the world, we assert our right to pass laws which will keep Australians safe – safe from scammers, safe from criminals,” Jones said.
“For the life of me, I can’t see how Elon Musk or anyone else, in the name of free speech, thinks it is OK to have social media platforms publishing scam content, which is robbing Australians of billions of dollars every year. Publishing deepfake material, publishing child pornography. Live streaming murder scenes. I mean, is this what he thinks free speech is all about?”
Stephen, I am afraid it very much is, and he, unfortunately, has support from the other side of the aisle in Australia.
“That’s a deeply disturbing thing because we know that in recent times, they got those things wrong on many occasions,” Liberal Senator and shadow home affairs minister James Paterson said in an interview with Sky News yesterday (12 September).
“Australians legitimately held political beliefs should not be censored by either the government or by foreign social media platforms.”
Paterson also made a passing reference to his long-running suspicions regarding social media platform TikTok.
“I think we’re going to get ourselves into a very dangerous state of affairs if we allow, for example, during an election campaign, an American or Chinese-headquartered social media platform to decide what Australians can and cannot hear from political candidates and political parties,” Paterson said.
I’m not entirely sure that is the aim of the bill, but, again, never let accuracy get in the way of scoring a point.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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