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In an email after The Project segment aired, Elston told me he was thankful that the show “allowed me to communicate about the mission I’m on to end this child abuse all across the world.”

Though most of his recorded interview didn’t make it into the segment, Elston made his own recording, which he has posted on X. You can watch the 12 minute clip below. The Project also provided the raw footage of Elston’s full interview to him.

Here is the full, unedited footage of my interview with Australian Channel 10’s ‘The Project.’

Last week, the Australian government ordered @X to take down one of my posts critical of Teddy Cook, a trans-idenitifed female appointed to a panel of @WHO ‘experts’ tasked with… pic.twitter.com/eXzUHrtT2q

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 4, 2024

Rachael Wong, CEO of Women’s Forum Australia (WFA), said it was great to see a mainstream show like The Project platform one of the most fervent advocates against paediatric gender medicine, billboard and all.

Wong, a campaigner for women’s sex-based rights, told Dystopian Down Under that it was also encouraging to see The Project panelists “genuinely discuss concerns around the eSafety Commissioner’s overreach in this case.”

“This is not the first time the eSafety Commissioner has targeted tweets challenging gender ideology,” said Wong, noting a pattern of opinion policing that she calls “highly disturbing.”

Wong pointed to several posts previously censored by eSafety, including one suggesting that men can’t breastfeed, and another about a trans-identified male who allegedly injured female players during a women’s football game in NSW.

eSafety is headed up by the Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who has publicly criticised Elon Musk since his purchase of the Twitter platform in 2022 over his advocacy of free speech on the internet.

Inman Grant, who is affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF), famously suggested a “recalibration” of human rights in online spaces, including freedom of speech, at a WEF meeting in 2022.

As it stands, however, Elston’s speech is protected under Australian law, asserts the Free Speech Union of Australia (FSU). “We find this decision from the Commissioner to be unduly censorious,” said the FSU in a letter sent to the eSafety Commissioner last week.

While Australia has no First Amendment or bill of rights speech protections, FSU highlighted that under the law, Australians “have a right to freely express their political opinions,” including insults, and eSafety “has no business trying to censor someone living in another country.”

The FSU is now working with Elston on his appeal against eSafety’s censorship of his post.

“This is a really important case which is fundamental to our democracy,” said Reuben Kirkham, Co-Director of the FSU, in an email to Dystopian Down Under.

Kirkham pointed out that eSafety’s powers under the Online Safety Act are discretionary (per Section 88), which leaves the potential for bias in their application. “We understand that many genuine claims (e.g. doxxing) by [critics of gender ideology] are not being addressed,“ said Kirkham.

As example, in a post on X in January this year, sex-based rights campaigner Angela Jones claimed that eSafety did not act on her complaint to the regulator after she was doxxed and stalked online.

At the same time, “it is concerning that the Commissioner has also associated herself with Teddy Cook” in the recent past, said Kirkham. In September 2022, eSafety announced Cook’s involvement in crafting online resources promoted by the regulator “to help the LGBTIQ+ community safely navigate the online world.”

Australia’s Plans for Further Censorship

In the end, it was this inconsistent and ad hoc approach to eSafety’s censorship that bothered The Project hosts the most.

Whether or not Elston’s appeal and X’s intended legal action result in the eSafety’s censorship being overturned, it appears that this round can be chalked up as a win for anti-censorship and anti-gender medicine activists.

“The Australian government’s attempt at censoring me has backfired spectacularly,” Elston posted last week.

But The Project panel’s proposed solution to censorship overreach suggests that there is still work to do in educating the public about the Censorship Industrial Complex, and advocating for better ways of dealing with speech and information flows.

“If government (sic) is really worried about abusive environments online, then come up with a structural response to the way that social media companies are allowed to operate… whether it be the filters they’re required to use, or the way their algorithms work,” suggested Aly.

This is essentially what will happen if the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s (ACMA) Misinformation Bill passes into legislation later this year.

Under the draft legislation, ACMA will gain new powers to set and enforce industry standards for digital platforms, with the stated aim of combatting mis- and disinformation.

The bill casts an extraordinarily wide net over the kinds of speech that might be censored, including content that could be construed as posing a threat to certain identities, to the environment, to health, to democratic processes, or to the economy.

Under threat of hefty fines and criminal penalties, platforms will play it safe, most likely implementing blanket filters like Aly suggests. This will have the effect of censoring more speech, not less, on a staggeringly broad range of issues.

After receiving widespread public criticism, with many commentators likening ACMA’s aspirations to a Ministry of Truth, the bill is now being overhauled. (The fact that the government exempted itself from the definition of misinformation probably didn’t help the optics). A final version will be tabled later this year.

The Australian government’s proposed misinformation laws come at a time when governments around the world are cracking down on free speech under the pretence of protecting the public (and democracy) against ‘misinformation’ and/or ‘online harm’, from Europe, to the US, Ireland, Scotland, Canada and Brazil.

Read more at Dystopian Down Under.

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Republished with thanks to Dystopian Down Under. Image courtesy of Unsplash.