When Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, he had lofty aims: it was important to the future of civilisation, so he contended, to cultivate a “common digital square”. His stated vision was a platform that could accommodate wide-ranging beliefs and facilitate debate without violence. Fast forward to England in 2024 and this ideal has totally collapsed. High streets are ablaze, and while X is not to blame it is far from innocent. The platform is awash with violent rhetoric that has spilled out of the digital square and on to the English high street, while Elon Musk has taunted the Prime Minister and likening the United Kingdom to the Soviet Union.
This was a test for the new Labour administration and not one it has passed. Musk – a man whose cosmic ambition is matched only by his base puerility – tweeted on Sunday that “civil war is inevitable” in Britain. On Monday, a spokesperson for Keir Starmer addressed the comments, saying there was “no justification” for the intervention. This was the mistake: like all agitators, Musk was buoyed by the attention. Only a few hours later he directed his umbrage to Starmer personally. “Shouldn’t you be concerned about attacks on *all* communities?” Musk asked in response to Starmer’s condemnation of violence towards Muslims. He then called the Prime Minister “#TwoTierKeir”, in reference to the far-right argument that the police are treating white working-class protesters more harshly than minority groups.
Neither Starmer nor No 10 are responsible for Musk’s slew of posts. But in a week where Starmer needed to appear the ultimate statesman he has been undermined by an internet squabble. Giving the X owner any oxygen at all was a mistake: it debased the public conversation and fanned Musk’s rhetorical flames. Changing approach was right: Starmer has refused to acknowledge or name Musk himself. Once the unrest begins to cool, Labour may start asking itself questions: what can be done about these social media platforms? Should anything be done?
Underpinning Musk’s vision for X as a new digital square was a correct diagnosis: the digital revolution had not led to a utopian global village but instead had overseen the further siloing of perspectives, and the creation of more potent intellectual echo chambers (Fox and the New York Post on one side, MSNBC and the New York Times on the other, perhaps). And as the socially censorious atmosphere of the 2010s took hold of social media, the space to discuss different ideas receded from the public realm. A newly imagined Twitter could have been the tonic.
The ambition was noble. But it was executed using Elon Musk’s rather unique sense of the common good, imbued with his ultra-libertarian approach to speech. Shortly after buying the platform in 2022 Musk announced a “general amnesty” to accounts that had been suspended – some for proliferating so-called hateful content – under the previous Twitter administration. Among those reinstated were Tommy Robinson, founder of the English Defence League. Robinson is one of many who have used the site to stoke riotous tension: “Get there and show your support,” he wrote on X the day after the Southport stabbings. “People need to rise up.”
X is not the sole problem: riots like the ones seen across England in the past week are organised, seemingly, over the encrypted messaging service Telegram (one voice note on this messaging app was considered a trigger point for Dublin’s November riots). Facebook played a pivotal role in the 6 January 2021 riots in Washington DC. And, for all the accusations levelled at Musk, this problem did not start with him. “How Twitter’s algorithm is amplifying extreme political rhetoric,” CNN explained in 2019, three years before Musk obtained the platform. But thanks to Musk’s free-speech absolutism and vocally libertarian politics, X has become a standard bearer for all the by-products of an expansive, low-regulated social media environment.
These riots cannot be divorced from their material causes. A trigger point like an attack on young girls reveals fault lines caused by years of deprivation and failed community building. But social media is a catalyst. In the hands of a radical like Elon Musk it is an even more potent one. If Labour can craft a fair, long-term solution – which balances the values of freedom with the need to maintain a safe public realm – it would rank among its greatest legacies.
[See also: What a surgeon saw in Gaza]
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