‘Abhorrent’: PM slams plans for US execution livestream

Lucinda Garbutt-Young and Noah Secomb | October 13, 2026

Social media platforms that broadcast a livestream of a US military execution risk damaging their reputation, the prime minister has warned, as the government is urged to minimise casual exposure of the harmful content.

Australian social media users, whether they want to or not, could be witness to the death of Nidal Hasan by firing squad in early December following the Trump administration’s pledge to livestream proceedings.

Following calls from federal politicians and civil society to intervene, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said there was no easy lever to pull to stop Australians from accessing the content.

“I find the idea of live streaming the death of anybody completely abhorrent. We should do whatever we can to stop that occurring,” Mr Albanese told ABC TV on Tuesday.

“Anyone broadcasting this will damage their own reputations as well.

“They have a social responsibility here to do the right thing and certainly we will do whatever we can.

“These things are not just as simple as turning off a light switch, and we will do what we can to shut it down.”

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the government remained opposed to the death penalty and agreed it would be deeply distressing for anyone to see the footage.

“We believe that platforms do have a responsibility to meet these expectations,” Senator Wong told the upper house during Question Time.

The nation’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has said she has no power to stop the video from being shown domestically, instead calling on social media platforms to halt it. 

It comes amid a backdrop of broader online safety conversations in Australia, as the government hopes to pass its long-awaited digital duty of care bill this week.

Greens leader David Shoebridge said he would welcome efforts to pass the bill before the end of the parliamentary year to set rules for platforms before the livestream occurs.

Blocking the video faced multiple hurdles, RMIT innovative interactive technologies expert Dana McKay said.

“AI (detection) is tricky because we have a lot of content that looks kind of like this that we do accept socially. Movies and shooter games,” Dr McKay told AAP.

“It will also spread across the internet …all these news organisations, all these video hosting sites, all these individuals with social media accounts who can host the video as well.”

She said the fact it will likely be broadcast through federal US channels has created a “bizarre situation”.

“The two months notice is good because it does give us some time to figure out what we are asking of social media companies and Google and all of these these big platforms,” Dr McKay said.

The public execution has been ordered by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, one of President Donald Trump’s closest colleagues.

Mr Trump has said he’s still considering whether the US will livestream the execution of Hasan, a former army major and physician who was found guilty of killing 13 people on a military base in 2009.

Online safety advocacy group Digital Rights Watch has slammed the lack of action from all stakeholders and urged eSafety to learn from previous incidents.

The commission was granted emergency powers to notify platforms to remove harmful content in the wake of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, which was livestreamed on Facebook.

“There’s a good chance that video of the execution would count as class 1 material … eSafety already has powers to demand the removal of such content, and they should be using them in this instance,” Digital Rights Watch head of policy Tom Sulston told AAP.

Representatives from social media giant Meta declined to comment on the matter.