Elon Musk’s X wins appeal to lift block on Australians seeing Charlie Kirk shooting footage | Charlie Kirk shooting
Australia’s classification review board has overturned a decision to block Australians from seeing footage of the shooting of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk on social media after Elon Musk’s X appealed the order sought by the eSafety commissioner.
Following Kirk’s death at Utah Valley University on September 10, the eSafety commissioner appealed to the board to have video of the attack declassified in Australia. The decision to “de-classify” the video allowed eSafety to serve notices on social media platforms ordering posts to be geo-blocked for users based in Australia.
X appealed the decision regarding two separate Kirk videos. He also appealed the decision regarding another video that was deemed to have been denied classification. Attack on Iryna Zarutska On a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, in August.
It was successful in X cases. Inside Kirk caseX argued that the Kirk video contained brief periods of violence and that no weapons were visible. The footage was grainy and the camera was quickly moving from the victim to the crowd.
The social media company argued that the video was not overly detailed, unnecessary or offensive, adding that the film was an unbiased and objective record of “a notorious public event of historical and political significance that spurred comprehensive public discourse.” X compared the video to the video of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Sign up: AÜ Breaking News email
The majority of the review board agreed that “despite the heinous nature of the incident,” the video was not so gratuitous, exploitative, or offensive as to warrant denial of classification, but that a more detailed depiction with different editing or interpretation might have risen to the level of rejected classification. The board changed the classification of the videos to R18+.
The minority opinion disagreed, arguing that the post was “a shareable video for the purpose of entertainment and/or personal gain (such as likes, shares, or views) for distribution to users of a social media platform.” They argued that it was not comparable to the Zapruder JFK video, which was released 15 years after the JFK assassination, “after emotions on the subject had calmed down.”
In a post on X’s global government affairs account, the platform welcomed the decision.
“X fought this case to defend freedom of expression and the importance of access to information on matters of public concern. We are determined to uphold these principles.”
A spokesperson for the eSafety commissioner welcomed the decision but said the review board’s view that the video should be rated R18+ meant platforms “had an obligation to prevent R18+ material from being shown to Australians under 18”.
The regulator did not notify any platform this week regarding the images of the terrorist attack on Bondi beach spread on social media, and stated that although the images were distressing, they did not reach out to the bar association to reject the classification.
Platforms were advised to place sensitive content labels and interstitial ads such as blurring on this content in line with their own content policies.
