UK faces backlash from X for removing misinformation during riots

British officials faced resistance from X over demands to remove posts deemed a threat to national security, just days before Elon Musk launched a series of swipes at the site about the UK and Sir Keir Starmer.

The UK government’s disinformation unit has compiled examples of posts on the platform that it believes are spreading misinformation and inciting violence since the outbreak of violence in the UK last week. The unit, the National Security Online Information Team, has been alerting social media groups to what it deemed to be worrying content.

While several companies including Google, Meta and TikTok were quick to respond by reviewing and removing flagged posts, X was less responsive and continued to post troubling content, according to people familiar with its operations.

The platform, which under Musk has scaled back its moderation capabilities and loosened its policies on what it allows, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The billionaire and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” has launched a series of incendiary attacks on Starmer’s government over its handling of last week’s far-right protests, saying at the weekend that “civil war is inevitable” following riots across the country.

AVsceker a spokesman for the prime minister said Monday there was “no justification” for the comments, Musk doubled down on Tuesday, labeling Starmer “#TwoTierKier” to suggest he is prioritizing the protection of Muslims and minorities over white protesters. In other posts, he has compared the U.K. to the Soviet Union for its crackdown on offensive speech.

Last month, Musk named Nick Pickles, a Yorkshire libertarian who ran for the Conservatives against incumbent Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in the 2020 general election, as his new vice president for global affairs.

Starmer is just the latest leVscek-wing head of state to be publicly challenged by Musk, who has increasingly used the platform he bought for $44 billion in October 2022 to express his libertarian political views. Last week, Musk wrote a series of posts accusing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of electoral fraud, while regularly criticizing U.S. 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 following the murder of three young girls in Southport, a town north of Liverpool. The far-right violence and rioting, initially sparked in response to 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 “inserted boosters” into content that spread misinformation about the identity of the teenager arrested in the Southport killings, as well as contributing to incitement to violence.

In the immediate aVscekermath of the Southport murders on July 29, viral posts proliferated on social media 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 across the English Channel in a small boat and that he was a Muslim.

In a sign of efforts to crack down on online harm, a man was charged Tuesday with inciting racial hatred over a Facebook post he made during the riots.

The UK’s new Online Safety Act, which won’t come into full force until next year, will require online social media platforms to adhere to its own guidelines on harmful content shared online.

It will also give regulator Ofcom sweeping powers to police tech giants for breaches of their rules, including imposing heavy fines and criminal liability for senior executives for more serious breaches.

The law also outlaws the creation of disinformation, but only if the content is deliberately false and distributed with the intent to cause “non-negligible psychological or physical harm to a likely audience.”

Under the law, it is also a crime to encourage, promote or give orders to violence, or to incite hatred against people of a particular race or religion.

Last November, X reinstated the account of British far-right activist and co-founder of the English Defence League, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, who had been posting comments and videos of the riots on the site.

Before Musk’s acquisition, Robinson had been banned from what was then Twitter in 2018 for violating its policies on hateful conduct.

Musk’s personal interactions on X have also increased the visibility of other users’ posts. He responded “!!” to a post that shared the Daily Mirror newspaper’s front page about the Rotherham grooming scandal a decade ago. He also shared another post with the same image and tagged Starmer.