The eSafety Commissioner has exercised additional powers under the Online Safety Act 2021 to limit the spread of the horrific video and manifesto produced by the Buffalo terror attack shooter.
Under the Act, material that is assessed to advocate a terrorist act is considered Class 1 material and is subject to removal by the eSafety Commissioner.
eSafety issued removal notices in relation to material hosted on eight overseas websites in the wake of the Buffalo attack on 14 May, resulting in material being taken down from four sites.
In the interests of quickly protecting Australians from continued exposure to the material, eSafety made informal requests to Microsoft and Google to remove any links to the material on the remaining four sites from their search engines. eSafety then issued a formal link deletion notice to Google.
Links to the material on those sites have now been removed from both Google and Microsoft’s Bing’s search results pages.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant reiterated her sympathies to the families and friends of the Buffalo victims.”This senseless act of violence claimed many innocent lives, and was planned and documented in the most deliberate and disturbing way,” Ms Inman Grant said.
“We are determined to do everything we can under the Act to protect Australians from exposure to this horrific material and to prevent it being used to promote, incite or instruct in further terrorist acts.”
