Musk insults Australians as ‘fascists’, who humorously fire back

Musk has just taken on the Brazilian government and suffered a defeat. Now he is attacking Australian politicians. The country down under wants to make platform operators more accountable for curbing false reports in the future.

Musk with another verbal outburst

The Australian government has introduced a bill that requires social media platforms to establish a code of conduct in the future that will oblige operators such as X to take action against the spread of false information. If the services do not comply with this code, they will face severe penalties.

Australia will then collect up to five percent of the companies’ global income as a penalty. Elon Musk, whose platform X has become an Eldorado for false information and conspiracy theories since it was taken over by the tech billionaire, does not like this at all. In his usual manner, he insulted the Australian government in a Post on X as “fascists”.

Politicians fire back

But Australian politicians are also apparently not afraid to speak up. In the past, the country’s prime minister called Elon Musk an “arrogant billionaire”. After Musk’s recent verbal outburst, Minister Bill Shorten has now spoken out and humorously expressed his opinion about the integrity of the American businessman. He only supports the right to freedom of expression when it serves his own economic interests.

Elon Musk has more positions on freedom of speech than the Kama Sutra Bill Shorten

The matter is still only a legislative proposal. If it is implemented, however, X could face hefty fines. Australia had already shown itself to be a pioneer in regulating the tech sector. According to Ars-Technica recently introduced new proposals regarding age restrictions for social media. In the past, Meta was also threatened if Facebook and Instagram stopped paying the creators of news content for links to their platforms.

Additional problems for Musk in Brazil

But even without the dispute with Australia, Elon Musk is fighting with politicians. After Starlink’s accounts were initially frozen in Brazil, the company and X now had to pay a fine of 3.3 million US dollars to the South American country for violating local laws. Even Musk’s decision to close X’s Brazilian offices did not protect the two companies from this.