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Elon Musk's social media platform has refused to remove a video that Axel Rudakopana watched minutes before he killed three young children, despite numerous requests from authorities in Australia and the UK.
Australian internet regulator Esafety said on Friday it noted with “great sadness” that the video – which shows the violent stabbing of a bishop in Sydney in April – had been viewed by the killer on X despite the platform several months before. The attack in Southport last summer.
Immediately after the Australian attack, companies including Google, Microsoft, Snap and Tiktok acted quickly to cooperate with the esafeter and ensure the Wakeley stabbing video was not accessed from their platforms. “X Corp has chosen not to remove the video from its platform,” the regulator said.
Video footage of a bishop being stabbed at a church in West Sydney was circulated online in April, but X only geotapped the footage in AustraliaThis means that people elsewhere in the world, and local users of VPNS, can continue to see the violent attack.
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said this week that the government was contacting X directly with a request to remove the video from the platform. “Companies should not profit from hosting content that puts children's lives at risk,” she told the Commons.
Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to a minimum of 52 years in prison on Thursday after admitting to killing three young girls at Taylor Swift's dance class in Southport.
Musk tweeted repeatedly in the wake of the killings, accusing British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer of “prioritizing mosques over British girls in dance classes.” Musk also amplified tweets by far-right provocateur Tommy Robinson who claimed that “Muslims are running in the streets unchallenged by police, attacking any non-Muslim.” The interventions led to accusations that he was exaggerating tensions that led to riots across British towns and cities last summer.
On Friday, Musk shared an article about the Southport killings, saying “Never forget.”
But he has so far refused to intervene to force his company to take down the video Rudakubana saw, and the video is still circulating on X as of Friday afternoon.
The Financial Times contacted X to ask why the video had not been removed, but received no response.
The court in Rudakupana's case heard this week that a search of the Lenovo disk found at his home showed he had deleted his entire browser history apart from one search on the day of the attack. Six minutes before he left to carry out the murders, he had searched X for “Mar Mari Emmanuel Stabbing”.
When police carried out the same search for X during the investigation, they found that it led to posts containing footage of the Sydney attack three months earlier.
The prosecution also detailed Rudakubana's online profiles and social media handles in court, including Account X. As of Friday, his Account
The Australian regulator sought legal action to try to force
Musk criticized the decision, accusing him of being a “commissar” in trying to censor the internet.
This sparked an angry reaction from the country's politicians, including Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, who said it was “sad” that X was fighting the order to remove the video and criticized the billionaire's stance.
However, A The court chose to fight the injunction on the video being shown on the basis that X had taken “reasonable steps” to stop the video being shown in Australia. The case has been viewed as a potential test case in whether local regulations can be applied on a global basis.
The Muslim Safety Commissioner dropped his case in June pending a review of Australia's online safety laws.
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy
