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British officials have faced resistance from X over calls to take down posts that are deemed a threat to national security, as Elon Musk launched a series of jibes on the site about the UK and Sir Keir Starmer.
The UK government’s disinformation unit has been compiling examples of posts on the platform its believes are spreading disinformation and inciting violence since the outbreak of clashes across the UK last week. The unit — the National Security Online Information Team — alerted social media groups to what they saw as concerning content.
Though several companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok have been quick to respond by scrutinising and removing flagged posts, X has been less responsive and has kept concerning content up, according to people briefed on its activities.
The platform, which under Musk has cut back on its moderation capabilities and loosened its policies on what it allows, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The billionaire and self-declared “free speech absolutist” has launched a series of incendiary attacks on Starmer’s government over its handling of far-right protests over the past week, stating over the weekend that “civil war is inevitable” following the riots across the country.
After a spokesperson for the prime minister said on Monday there was “no justification” for such comments, Musk doubled down on Tuesday, labelling Starmer “#TwoTierKier” to suggest that he is prioritising the protection of Muslims and minorities over white protesters. In other posts, he likened the UK to the Soviet Union for its policing of offensive speech.
Musk appointed Nick Pickles, a libertarian from Yorkshire who ran against current home secretary Yvette Cooper as a Conservative candidate in the 2020 general election, to be his new vice-president of global affairs last month.
Starmer is just the latest leftwing head of state to be publicly challenged by Musk, who has been increasingly using the platform he bought for $44bn in October 2022 to voice his libertarian political views. Last week, Musk wrote a series of posts accusing Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro of election fraud, while he has regularly slammed US President Joe Biden, a Democrat. Musk recently declared his support for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the country’s November election.
In the UK, riots erupted a week ago in the wake of the murder of three young girls in Southport, a town north of Liverpool. The far-right violence and disruption, initially sparked in response to the stabbings at a dance class, has spread to cities and towns across the country and led to more than 400 arrests.
Cooper said on Monday that social media platforms had “put rocket boosters” under content that spread misinformation about the identity of the teenager held over the killings in Southport, as well as contributing to incitement towards violence.
Soon after the murders in Southport on July 29, viral posts on social media platforms proliferated with false information about Axel Rudakubana before he was charged and named — including claims that he had recently arrived in the UK as a migrant crossing the Channel in a small boat and that he was a Muslim.
In a sign of efforts to crack down on online harms, a man was charged on Tuesday with stirring up racial hatred with a post he wrote on Facebook during the riots.
The UK’s new Online Safety Act, which will not be fully enforced until next year, will require online social media platforms to adhere to their own guidelines about harmful content shared online.
It will also give regulator Ofcom sweeping powers to police the tech giants for flouting their rules, including imposing hefty fines and criminal liability for named senior executives in the most serious breaches.
The legislation also outlaws creating misinformation, but only if the content is deliberately false and distributed with the intent to cause “non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
Under the act, it is also an offence to encourage, promote or provide instructions for violence, or to incite hatred against people of a particular race or religion.
Last November, X reinstated the account of the UK far-right activist and co-founder of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, who has posted continual commentary and videos of the rioting on the site.
Before Musk’s takeover, Robinson had been banned from what was then Twitter in 2018 for breaching its policies concerning hateful conduct.
Musk’s personal interactions on X have also boosted the visibility of other users’ posts. He responded “!!” to a post sharing the front-page of the Daily Mirror newspaper of the Rotherham grooming scandal a decade ago. He also shared another post with the same image and tagged Starmer.
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