US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week that the execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan would be livestreamed when the military execution is carried out. The Greens have called on eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant and the Albanese government to ensure Australians cannot see the event on television or their devices.
Under the Online Safety Act, the eSafety commissioner can order platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and X to block Australians from accessing content deemed "refused classification" under Australian classification law. The designation is typically applied to extreme violent material online such as terror attack footage, but it could be applied to clips of the execution after the fact.
Some companies, including Meta, will probably enforce their own terms of service and prevent the video from circulating. But history suggests others will take the opposite position. X, owned by Elon Musk, has a long record of legal challenges against eSafety over such content. In 2024, X succeeded in keeping footage of the stabbing of a Sydney bishop available to Australians. It later won an appeal to have the classification of video of the assassination of rightwing influencer Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University downgraded from refused classification to R18+, and won a similar case over footage of an attack on Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The eSafety framework stems from laws passed by the then Coalition government in 2019 in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack.