Australia Tells America: Our Online Rules Stop At Your Screen Border, We Swear
KEY POINTS
- •On December 3, 2025, Bruce Lehrmann’s appeal in a defamation case related to Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations was rejected.
- •Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, told senators Aussie laws require companies providing services to follow local rules.
- •After the 2024 Wakeley church stabbing videos incident, eSafety accepted geo-blocking for Australians as meeting legal compliance.
- •Grant sent an official letter to a US lawmaker, choosing diplomatic formality despite the letter also being leaked to Sky News.
On December 3, 2025, Bruce Lehrmann spectacularly lost his appeal over a defamation claim tied to massively sensitive allegations involving Brittany Higgins—a legal circus worthy of a true crime docuseries. Meanwhile, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, diplomatically reassured a U.S. senator that Aussie laws don’t mess with American free speech, no matter how much social media giant X (formerly Twitter) bitched and moaned after the infamous 2024 Wakeley church stabbing videos prompted eSafety to geo-block Aussies from grim content—but only on Aussie soil, because even online sovereignty has borders now. And of course, the letter to the U.S. chairman was sent with the gravitas of international snail mail protocol, just to keep it official and drama-free—unlike the concurrent leak to Sky News, which smells more like reality TV than diplomacy.
Share the Story
Australia’s eSafety agency insists geo-blocking posts is Aussie law compliance, not America's freedom of speech lockdown. We’re all just toddlers guarding our digital sandboxes.
When Australia says it’s not banning your tweets, just blocking them from showing there, you realize even the Internet uses border patrol.
X challenged Aussie online safety, then quietly dropped the case. Remind me, who else calls this 'winning by losing'?
Source: Theguardian | Published: 12/3/2025 | Author: Nino Bucci (now) and Nick Visser (earlier)
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