Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, has published an open letter reminding social platforms of their legal obligation to heed the Online Safety Act 2023, which requires platforms to “assess and mitigate the risks of illegal activity” including “content amounting to offenses of stirring up hatred or provoking violence.” Platforms are furthermore asked to “reduce the risk of illegal content appearing,” with Ofcom providing lengthy guidance on what constitutes illegal content.
The letter comes in the wake of civil unrest in Belfast. Monday, a Dublin man was stabbed in the street in an apparent knife attack; the assailant, a Sudanese national, was charged with attempted murder on Tuesday. The race and presumed immigration status on the attacker quickly became fodder for politicization among far-right anti-immigration figures in the UK. Overnight, Belfast became the center of a riot in which several homes in immigrant-heavy neighborhoods were set on fire by masked men, according to the Washington Post.
Content containing hate towards immigrants or misinformation about the attack has spread broadly on social media. Unfortunately, X owner Elon Musk seems to be among those helping it gain traction. Musk retweeted an image from an account named Alice Smith, showing Banksy-style graffiti of a British high court judge violently attacking a White Lives Matter protester with their gavel. He retweeted the far right activist known as Tommy Robinson who said there was a “two-tier” policing and judiciary in the UK favoring immigrants. He retweeted the Restore Britain MP Rupert Lowe, who posted a still image purportedly from the attack with the comment “Millions must go,” a reference to the mass deportations Lowe is in favor of. He retweeted former academic and failed Reform UK candidate Matt Goodwin who said that a “very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration & open borders” was responsible for inflamed tensions. Goodwin added that the policy in question would “destroy Western nations.”
Musk has around 240.1 million followers on the platform he owns; he has in the past reportedly tweaked the algorithm of the site to increase the reach of his own tweets.
In his fugue state of posting, he also retweeted an account by the name of Visegrád 24, which showed an image from the attack side by side with an image from the arrest of Henry Nowak shortly before his death. Nowak was a student who was fatally stabbed by a Sikh man, Vickrum Digwa, in December, but was arrested after Digwa’s brother called the police accusing Nowak of a racial attack.
None of Musk’s retweets specifically call for violence directly. Musk’s tweets come in the face of a pledge the company made to the UK back in May, where it said it would work to reduce “hate and terror content.”
The letter comes a single day after Ofcom announced new safety measures platforms would need to adopt to tackle “spikes in illegal content during a crisis.” That includes the sort of disinformation that is rapidly propagated in the wake of a real-world tragedy to encourage further violence.
Of course, Ofcom’s ability to address issues like this is already being challenged; in May, Meta sued the agency, saying its regime of penalties was “disproportionate.” But perhaps the platforms will respond to Ofcom’s not-even-sternly-worded letter reminding them of their public duty.
