eSafety commissioner got ‘credible death threats’ after clashing with Elon Musk

Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant says she got “credible death threats” after clashing with tech billionaire Elon Musk earlier this year. Highly graphic videos and misinformation flooded Mr Musk’s social media platform X in April after the deadly Bondi Junction stabbings and a subsequent stabbing of an Assyrian Orthodox priest in Sydney’s southwest. Ms Inman Grant tried forcing X to remove violent footage of the attacks circulating on the platform, but the platform refused, sparking a legal fight amid a torrent of severe online criticism, including from Mr Musk himself. The eSafety commissioner eventually dropped her Federal Court case after a series of legal setbacks. Speaking to ABC radio on Friday, Ms Inman Grant said she copped “gendered abuse” in an attempt to silence her as a public official. “You don’t see men getting rape threats or comments about their appearance, their age, their traditional roles and the same sort of weaponization of their children, family against them,” she said. An independent report on technology-facilitated gender-based violence found 83 per cent of the tens of thousands of X posts directed at Ms Inman Grant after her action against the platform were negative, hateful or threatening. Most of the posts were either sexualised or targeted her gender in some way. “There were some credible death threats,” Ms Inman Grant said. “Specifically, if you don’t step down from your job within the next three days, we will do X, Y and Z to you, and we know where you live and we know where your work is.” She said she got security advice against travelling to the US, where she is originally from, because she “couldn’t be protected”. Even how she gets into the office has changed. “If someone is really targeting you and is fixated on you, there’s very little that [police] can do to protect you, short of 24/7, constant surveillance, and that is not a service that is available to me,” Ms Inman Grant said.