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Elon Musk’s X platform continues to be a breeding ground for violent anti-Muslim & anti-migrant hate, according to a new report from counter-hate researchers.
Analysis by the the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) – an organisation despised by far-right billionaire Musk – found that in the aftermath of the Southport murders last July, high-profile hate figures on social media platforms like Elon Musk’s X “falsely linked the attack to Muslims and migrants, leading to widespread disorder and violent riots across the UK.”
Now one year on from the 2024 riots following the Southport stabbings, new CCDH research finds that little has changed.
Research from the monitoring group found that “hateful influencers” garnered millions of views per day on X, with the platform “utterly failed to moderate this explosion of dangerous, violent content.”
CCDH’s findings led the UK’s online safety regulator Ofcom to conclude that there was a “clear connection” between posts on social media and the eruption of the 2024 riots.
Worryingly, the group finds that the “same forms of violent and murderous rhetoric that precipitated and inflamed the 2024 riots” are still widely circulating, with scant moderation by the platform.
The findings are likely to add further pressure on the Labour Government to act, and to review its heavy use of X.
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The research shows how posts from six far-right or extremist influencers – Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Andrew Tate, Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson – are the initial “parent” posts in an “intensely violent” series of replies from platform users.
Reply posts “encourage extreme acts of violence against Muslims and migrants: to shoot, to maim, and to kill.”
And X then amplifies and monetises the influencers – and the engagement they generate on the platform – despite “continued breaches” of platform rules.
During the summer riots in England last year, X emerged as a “crucial vector of false information and hate,” CCDH finds.
“Rather than taking steps to mitigate harmful and illegal content, Elon Musk, owner of X, personally amplified conspiracy theories, warning of an impending “civil war” in Britain to his hundreds of millions of followers,” the authors write.
“Hate preachers” who had been banned from Twitter before being reinstated by Musk are still receiving millions of views per day.
Of the six prominent accounts identified by CCDH in the wake of the riots (Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Laurence Fox, Andrew Tate, and Calvin Robinson), CCDH found that each remains active on X. All are ‘verified’ Blue Tick users, meaning their posts are actively promoted by the X algorithm. They are highly likely to generate income from X through their posts, through the platform’s Creator Revenue Sharing programme, which channels ad revenue to high-engagement users.
Generating large numbers of replies boosts posts’ engagement, and hate-filled content appears particularly likely now to generate high-engagement.
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Three of the six accounts analysed (Fox, Robinson and Tate) are also allowed to offer paid subscriptions to their content on the platform, enabling them to profit further from their content.
The report finds: “Today, [these influencers’] posts are still routinely followed by streams of replies containing threats, incitements to violence, and open expressions of hatred toward Muslims and migrants. These appear to remain largely unchecked, despite clearly violating X’s own rules which prohibit such harmful content.”
Using an AI model, the researchers identified 4,379 violent replies targeting Muslims or migrants posted in response to 322 posts from the six accounts in the past year. These replies amassed at least 383,102 views in total and “encourage extreme acts of violence, including calls to shoot, to maim, and to kill” CCDH says.
Examples include:
- “We need to shoot them at the point of entry, as they unload from the dinghies.”
- “Dont deport them, let them come in and i will shot them all [sic]”
- “I would like to go postal on the Muslims! They are evil as hell!”
A large number of posts remain live calling for Muslims to be ‘exterminated’ and ‘executed’.
Most replies promoting violence were found under parent posts by Tommy Robinson with 1,838 violent replies, followed by Paul Golding with 1,280 violent replies, Ashlea Simon with 1,103 violent replies, Laurence Fox with 121 violent replies, and (perhaps surprisingly) Andrew Tate with 21 violent replies, according to the report.
The type of violent speech identified is all prohibited by X with the platform’s rules explicitly banning content that “threatens, incites, glorifies, or expresses desire for violence or harm.”
Hoping to learn lessons from last year’s riots, after a car struck spectators at Liverpool’s victory parade on 26 May this year, police used an updated strategy of more transparent communication, revealing that the suspect was white.
Still, false and misleading claims about the event on X reached 29 million views, “often exceeding the reach of credible sources like Sky News and Merseyside Police.” Only two of 55 false or misleading posts displayed Community Notes (X’s user-moderated fact-checking scheme), CCDH found.
But 52 top ‘credible’ posts on the incident received 24.7 million views, including posts from the UK’s major news sources, with 17.9 million views and posts from official sources and emergency services with 6.8 million views.
Amid the Liverpool crash, one post by ‘Yorkshire Lass’, which has almost a million views and no Community Note, said that the driver of the car looks “mid to late 20’s and foreign’. She asked where this was “intentional” or “planned” adding she believed it had: “False flag vibes all over it” (i.e. claiming it was Government-orchestrated).
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A post by another prolific far-right verified user, with 3.8 million views, does not have a Community Note and claimed that the 53-year-old man arrested was involved in another incident and was not the driver of the car, adding that there is something “they’re obviously not telling us”. It is likely their content is monetised by the users.
Each of the six main influencers discussed in the report posted at least once on X with arguably inflammatory posts during last summer’s unrest.
Tommy Robinson, the far-right anti-Islam activist posted a video about the Southport attack with the caption: “There’s more evidence to suggest islam is a mental health issue rather than a religion of peace.”
Paul Golding, co-leader of Britain First posted “the evidence is stacking up that the Southport attack was carried out by a migrant” (the killer was a Cardiff-born Brit, the son of Evangelical Christians originally from Rwanda).
Ashlea Simon, co-leader of Britain First wrote said “We all know who’s responsible for the Southport attack. White Christian teens don’t stab children, Islamists do.”
And Andrew Tate, the misogynistic influencer, wrote: “ILLEGAL MIGRANT STABS 6 LITTLE GIRLS. WAKE UP.” It received 15.2 million views.
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Laurence Fox, a former GB News presenter who reacted to news of the attack by posting “we need to permanently remove Islam from Great Britain.”
Finally, Calvin Robinson, another former GB News presenter who posted during the disorder that “Islam is evil and needs removing from the UK.”
Also today, a separate report from the democracy think tank Demos finds a major exception in X’s Abuse and Harassment policy, allowing far more abuse of politicians than ordinary members of the public.
Posts deemed to be a “critique of institutions, practices and ideas” are exempt from the anti-abuse policy, because they are considered “a fundamental part of the freedom of expression”.
The Demos report finds: “As a result, a post that attacks an individual public figure could be considered acceptable by X because it could be treated as critical political commentary.” It appears to suggest that violence-promoting abuse of MPs on the platform is essentially permitted.
Over the weekend, the UK Government announced that people who threaten or intimidate election campaigners will face “tougher sentences” under new proposals designed to protect democratic participation and ensure that no one is discouraged from standing for public office.
The measures will, ministers say, introduce “clearer consequences for behaviour that crosses the line into abuse, harassment or intimidation.”
“Courts will be empowered to impose tougher punishment on individuals who target candidates, campaigners, elected representatives, or electoral staff with threatening or hostile behaviour – whether online or in person,” the Government announcement stated.
However, the planned changes, by definition, deal with abuse and threats after they have happened – rather than tackling the business model that actively amplifies and encourages them. There was no word on further regulation of social media platforms profiting from online harassment.
X was approached for comment.
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