Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has expressed “great sadness” over revelations that the Southport killer, who murdered three young girls in the UK, had viewed a violent video of the Sydney church stabbing just minutes before his crimes. The case has reignited fierce debates about the real-world impacts of extreme online content and the challenges in moderating the internet.
18-year-old Axel Rudakubana was sentenced to 52 years in prison on Thursday for stabbing three girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July 2024. It emerged that only six minutes before leaving his home to commit the horrific acts, Rudakubana had searched for footage of the shocking Sydney church attack from April of that year, in which Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was brutally stabbed while livestreaming a sermon.
eSafety’s Uphill Battle To Remove Violent Content
The Sydney stabbing video was at the center of a contentious dispute between eSafety and Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). eSafety had issued notices ordering the removal of 65 tweets containing the graphic footage, arguing it represented prohibited extremely violent material.
While other major platforms like Google, Microsoft, Snap and TikTok complied with eSafety’s informal requests, X resisted removing the video globally, instead geo-blocking it only for Australian users. X accused eSafety of pursuing “global censorship” and vowed to “robustly challenge” the order in court.
“Research and the experience of law enforcement in Australia and internationally has shown a clear link between extreme, graphic violent material and harm to children, not to mention instances of real-world violence or attempted violence.”
– eSafety Spokesperson
Legal Battles and Jurisdictional Gray Areas
The standoff led to eSafety taking X to federal court while the company appealed the ruling. Both cases were eventually dropped as eSafety opted to await the outcome of a review of the Online Safety Act. X declared “free speech has prevailed” in response.
In providing an affidavit supporting X’s case, the stabbing victim Bishop Emmanuel himself argued the video should remain accessible online. This underscored the complex debates around the balance between transparency, free speech, and protecting the public from graphic violence.
Misinformation Fuels Further Unrest
The Southport killings also highlighted the dangerous spread of misinformation on social media. Far-right riots erupted across England and Northern Ireland in July 2024 based on false claims, amplified by large X accounts, that the attacker was a Muslim asylum seeker.
Later that year, Elon Musk inflamed tensions by labelling the Australian government “fascists” over a bill to curb mis- and disinformation online. The proposed legislation was ultimately abandoned after failing to win political support.
Renewed Calls for Regulatory Clarity
eSafety said it looks forward to the government’s long-awaited response to the Online Safety Act review handed to the communications minister late last year. Many hope this will provide clearer guidance on resolving the legal and jurisdictional gray areas around online content moderation.
“eSafety was guided by its mission to protect our community from harmful online material, including material that may severely traumatise, manipulate or radicalise vulnerable people, especially children and the young”.
– eSafety Spokesperson
The tragic Southport case has renewed urgent calls to tackle the spread of violent and extremist content online. But it also laid bare the complex challenges facing regulators worldwide in an increasingly borderless digital age – challenges that pit fundamental values like safety, free speech, and the global internet against each other.
As the internet’s transformative power grows by the day, the high-stakes battle to define the boundaries of the online world – and who gets to set them – shows no signs of abating. All eyes now turn to legislators to see if they can finally rise to the moment.
