‘Shocking disregard’: Elon Musk, X condemned at royal commission

A counsel assisting the antisemitism royal commission unequivocally condemned X and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, for using Holocaust images to justify platforming gruesome footage from the Bondi Hanukkah terror attack, after the platform ignored repeated requests to appear before the commission.

Richard Lancaster, SC, on Friday said that “although an apparent proponent of unconstrained speech, X has remained silent” in the face of damning evidence that the social media platform was one of the worst perpetrators in proliferating antisemitic hate online.

The corporation’s refusal to engage with the royal commission after repeated attempts to engage them showed “a shocking disregard for the Australian community”.

“X has demonstrated a complete lack of interest in providing transparency concerning a topic as important as keeping Australians safe from the proliferation of terrorist and violent mixed material, including extreme anti-Semitism,” Lancaster said.

He said X Corp’s attitude towards regulating hate speech was perhaps most evident in its response to footage connected with the Bondi Hanukkah attack itself, Lancaster said.

The royal commission earlier heard that Musk’s organisation fought to keep gruesome content relating to the Bondi massacre online, arguing it was no more graphic than a “gore movie”, Australia’s eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant told the royal commission on antisemitism.

‘X Corp’s conduct … begs the question whether X Corp has or ought to have a social licence to operate in Australia.’

Richard Lancaster, SC

Lancaster called X’s submission supporting its argument that “page after page” of Holocaust imagery in its submission supporting its position that a video depicting deceased victims of the Bondi Hanukkah attack should be permitted online “should be unequivocally condemned”.

“X Corp’s conduct, both within this commission and outside of it, begs the question whether X Corp has or ought to have a social licence to operate in Australia,” Lancaster said.

Dr Andre Oboler, chief executive officer of the Online Hate Prevention Institute, earlier told the commission that X had been difficult to work with for a decade, and particularly since the platform was bought by Musk, who had significantly downgraded its trust function.

“Dr Oboler has observed that [X] remains a major online contributor to online antisemitism … indeed, Dr Oboler was personally targeted on the platform,” Lancaster said.

Tala Cohen at CyberWell, a nonprofit that monitors and counters online antisemitism, told the commission that X’s removal rate for antisemitic content dropped from 54 per cent in 2024 to just above 29 per cent in 2026, making it the platform with the lowest removal rate, Lancaster recalled.

Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell said that regulating the online ecosystem to tackle hate speech and antisemitism in particular was central to the commission’s work.