Australia’s online regulator got death threats for case against X

On Friday, a Columbia University report, external into technology-facilitated gender-based violence – which used Ms Inman Grant as a case study – found that she had been mentioned in almost 74,000 posts on X ahead of the court proceedings, despite being a relatively unknown figure online beforehand. Dehumanising slurs and gendered language were also frequently noted, with users calling Ms Inman Grant names such as “left-wing Barbie”, or “captain tampon”. Speaking to the BBC, Ms Inman Grant said that Mr Musk’s decision to use “disinformation” to suggest that she was “trying to globally censor the internet” had amounted to a “dog whistle from a very powerful tech billionaire who owns his own megaphone”. She said that the torrent of online vitriol which followed had prompted Australian police to warn her against travelling to the US, and that the names of her children and other family members had been released across the internet. And when X refused to take down videos of the Wakeley attack – opting instead to geoblock the content from its Australian users – the commissioner sought and won a court injunction, forcing the company to temporarily comply. The case turned into a test of Australia’s ability to enforce its online rules against social media giants operating in multiple jurisdictions – one which failed after a Federal Court judge found that banning the posts from appearing on X globally would not be “reasonable” as it would likely be “ignored or disparaged by other countries”. In June, Ms Inman Grant’s office said it would not pursue the case further, and that it would focus on other pending litigation against the platform. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2ymd32g2eo