X's longrunning litigation against the government over removal orders is impacting the larger industry itself, but perhaps not for the best, depending on who is doing the looking.

Last week, X again publicly inveighed against Australia's eSafety Commissioner for her ongoing efforts to try to compel X to take video footage of a violent stabbing of a religious leader in Sydney back in April off its platform.

At the time, Australian officials were worried that it could fuel religious tensions that would lead to further acts of violence in response. And while there had been violent clashes after the attack, X, along with other social platforms, did agree to remove the footage for Australian users.

The eSafety Commissioner then requested the removal of the video from every user's account all over the world. X refused because, in his opinion, the Australian officials do not have the right to dictate global censorship of their content.

It's a tough case, as X does have a pretty sound argument regarding officials from one country having requests for global censorship. On the other hand, X does remove content at the behest of various governments, as its own reports show that it "globally deleted 40,331 items of content" between October 2023 and March 2024 to comply with the E.U. Digital Services Act.

So while there appears to be a cause there, X is also selectively choosing which it will contest, and which requests it will honor. And in the case of a vicious stabbing incident, which may very well ignite tensions unnecessarily, the question all along has been: "Why not take it out?"

What, in this case, could possibly be the case for keeping this footage active?

Saving for details, X proceeded to take the eSafety Commission to court, wherein both parties agreed to settle on the case.

After its public statement, X said that :

"X welcomes the decision of the Australian eSafety Commissioner to concede that it should not have ordered X to block the video footage of the tragic attack on Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel."

Which doesn't exactly align with what the eSafety Commission posted about the agreement.

"With agreement of both parties, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has today made orders to resolve the proceedings brought by X Corp in relation to a removal notice issued to it by eSafety requiring the company to take all reasonable steps to ensure removal of the material depicting a declared terrorist attack on a religious leader.". eSafety considers it would be preferable to await consideration by the Federal Government of a pending review of Australia's statutory online safety framework rather than test the interaction of the National Classification Scheme and the Online Safety Act in this case.

So the Commission hasn't admitted that it was wrong to ask for removal, but has instead deferred a decision, pending a broader review of the related laws in this case.
But still, X seems pretty comforted with the conclusion:
Six months on, the eSafety Commissioner has had to admit X was right all along and Australians have the right to view the footage. It is a shame the Commissioner used such significant taxpayer resources for this legal battle when communities need to be allowed to see, decide and discuss what's true and important to them more now than ever.

Essentially, the case is yet another example of X choosing its battles, taking on governments and regulators in regions where X owner Elon Musk has personal grievances and seemingly wants to put pressure on the sitting government.

But X, all things considered, is complying with a far greater number of removal requests than previous Twitter management had been, while it's also now censoring certain political materials which seemingly conflict with Musk's own stated leanings.

For example, so while X is blowing its horn over free speech and being much more open to truth than Twitter, really, it is on its own ideological lines realigning its approach.
 
So now that X continues its litigation against what governments and regulators want to censor, will they hesitate before doing similar in the future? And if so, is that the right thing?