Jacqui Lambie deletes X account, calls for politicians to boycott platform as bitter fight over content heats up
The independent senator bid farewell to her 70k social media followers after Elon Musk came after the Prime Minister.
Jacqui Lambie has deleted her X account after lashing Elon Musk as a “friggin’ disgrace” who “should be jailed”.
The Tasmanian Senator has urged other politicians to boycott the online platform after its billionaire owner refused to remove footage from a Sydney church stabbing from its website.
“I think (Elon Musk) is a social media knob with no social conscience. Someone like that should be in jail,” Senator Lambie told Sky News earlier.
“I don’t give a stuff about the platform.”
“When you want to lead by example, it has to happen from here, so start switching off X.”
The X account for the Jacqui Lambie Network, Senator Lambie’s party, still remains active despite the last post being published in 2022.
The move comes as Elon Musk intensified his feud with Australian regulators this week.
In his latest salvo, he warned government intervention in social media platforms could lead to any country “controlling the entire internet”.
The owner of X, formerly Twitter, is sparring with the eSafety commissioner over an order to remove footage of the alleged stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel last Monday.
Overnight, after a court agreed to a two-day interim legal injunction, Mr Musk mocked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, suggesting his platform was the last stand against the government in free speech.
“We have already censored the content in question for Australia, pending legal appeal, and it is stored only on servers in the USA,” Mr Musk wrote on X.
Earlier he mocked the Aussie PM writing: “I’d like to take a moment to thank the PM for informing the public that this platform is the only truthful one.”
Mr Albanese said the tech boss had “chosen ego and showing violence over common sense”.
“This bloke thinks he’s above the Australian law, that he’s above common decency. And I tell you what, I say to Elon Musk, that he is so out of touch with what the Australian public want,” he told Sky News.
Mr Musk also posted a clip showing a map of the world with Australia replaced by a giant X — his
favourite letter of the alphabet.
In a written statement issued ahead of a court hearing on Wednesday, an eSafety spokesperson recognised that it would not be possible to remove all content from the attack online.
“While it may be difficult to eradicate damaging content from the internet entirely, particularly as users continue to repost it, eSafety requires platforms to do everything practical and reasonable to minimise the harm it may cause to Australians and the Australian community,” they said.The bitter fight between Australia and X began after footage of the alleged stabbing at the Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley were posted to social media.
eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant ordered X and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to take down the material.
X objected, vowing to fight the order, claiming restricting the visibility of the footage – or geoblocking – to people inside of Australia was sufficient.
But in a late Monday night court hearing, lawyers for the eSafety commissioner argued geoblocking did not go far enough to comply with the Online Safety Act.
A two day temporary injunction was granted, meaning X must hide the posts until the matter returns to court on Wednesday when lawyers can argue against the injunction before a final decision is made.
The government has used the saga as an opportunity to revive misinformation laws it shelved late last year amid criticism.
Speaking on Tuesday morning, Mr Albanese said he was willing to do whatever is necessary to take on Musk.
“And I find this bloke on the other side of the world, from his billionaire’s establishments, trying to lecture Australians about free speech, well, I won’t cop it and Australians won’t either,” he told Sky News.
But speaking late on Nine, he stopped short of suggesting the platform could be banned in the future.
“Well, we certainly will look at what measures we can take to strengthen … We don’t want … censorship here,” he said.
