
Elon Musk has won a case against the eSafety Commissioner after it tried to censor an ‘offensive post’ a Canadian man made about an Australian UN trans expert.
Chris Elston, a children’s safety campaigner who goes by the name of ‘Billboard Chris’ on X and lives in Canada, was sent an Orwellian ‘removal notice’ from the Australian Government’s eSafety Commissioner in March 2024.
Mr Elston’s alleged offence had been to share a Daily Mail story about Teddy Cook, a female-to-male trans Australian activist who landed a job on a World Health Organisation (WHO) expert panel drafting care guidelines for trans and non-binary people.
Julie Inman Grant, the eSafety Commissioner, deemed the post to be ‘cyber abuse’ and ordered X to remove it, prompting both Mr Elston and X to sue the Australian government.
On Tuesday night the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruled that Mr Elston’s post did not meet the definition of cyber abuse and the eSafety Commissioner should not have ordered its removal.
‘The more focussed question is whether I can be satisfied that the necessary intention to cause serious harm to the subject of the post has been established,’ deputy president Damien O’Donovan noted.
‘Based on the evidence before me, I am not satisfied that it has.’
The win was hailed as a victory for free speech by Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, who supported Mr Elston’s legal challenge alongside the Human Rights Law Alliance in Australia.
‘This is a decisive win for free speech and sets an important precedent in the growing global debate over online censorship,’ Mr Coleman said.
‘In this case, the Australian government alarmingly censored the peaceful expression of a Canadian citizen on an American-owned platform, evidence of the expansive reach of censorial forces, even beyond national borders.
‘Today, free speech has prevailed.’
Mr Elston told Daily Mail Australia the ruling ‘provides a safe road map for free speech in Australia and around the world’.
‘My intent was not to harm Teddy Cook but to encourage serious debate about these issues,’ he added.
More to come.