Why the ‘eKaren’ is trying to control content globally

The Commonwealth eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant (JIG), has banned X and Facebook from allowing certain "violent" videos to be shown on their platforms, and the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has now linked this to the need to stop "misinformation."

What has JIG, also known on X as "eKaren," banned?

Footage from the knife attacks at Sydney's Bondi Junction and in Wakely at the Assyrian Christian church of Christ the Good Shepherd.

I've seen these videos and I don't know what she is on about. Sure, at least in the case of the church, they captured an act of terrorism, but it was pretty blurry and indistinct.

All you saw really was the assailant going into a clinch with the priest.

In both cases, you saw acts of heroism as Australian men put themselves in the way of danger as they went after the assailants.

Where would "Bollard Man," who warded off the Bondi knifeman with a bollard be, if it wasn't for the footage that went viral. He's now on the fast track to citizenship because he has the qualities that we need more of here in Australia.

This was nothing like the Christchurch mosque massacre where the murderer livestreamed it. Both X and Facebook would have pulled that one down before JIG would have even had a sniff of it.

These videos were more like car crashes, and much less graphic and confronting than the videos you can still see online of killings in Gaza and Ukraine.

Weaponising 'misinformation'

I know little about JIG, except that she worked briefly for Twitter before Mr. Musk bought it, and appears to have a vendetta against him.

She also told a World Economic Forum that we need to rethink our attitudes to free speech in the internet era. Who knows what that means, but I doubt she was coming from the direction of free speech absolutism.

Some would suggest that perhaps she, and the prime minister, are happy with the potential propaganda use of footage from Gaza of Israeli carnage, and from Ukraine of exploding Russian tanks, but not footage from Sydney of Islamic extremism.