The attorney general Richard Hermer has said staff in his office are no longer to use the X social media website amid fears over the Elon-Musk-owned platform’s role in spreading disinformation
Government staff have been warned not to use the X social media platform amid disinformation fears.
The attorney general Richard Hermer has told his office to no longer post on X, the first time a government department has stopped using Elon Musk’s increasingly controversial platform.
Musk, who has previously called for the UK government to be overthrown and regularly faces criticism for promoting far-right and racist opinions, bought the platform in 2022.
Downing Street has in the past said that using X is necessary to reach the public, but the office of the attorney general is the first government body to stop using the app.
In recent weeks far-right agitators have used X to call for violence in response first to the killing of Henry Nowak – who was handcuffed as he died from a stab wound after his attacker falsely claimed to have been the victim of racism – and then in Belfast following a horrific knife attack which saw a Sudanese man charged with attempted murder.
The riots in Belfast, which saw masked thugs going from hose to hose looking for people from minority ethnic communities, was branded a “pogrom” by a Northern Irish MP in the wake of the violence.
Musk amplified calls for protest across Britain from anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson and wrote to his 240 million followers on X: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change.” He also boosted anti-immigration posts and messages from Rupert Lowe, leader of the fringe far-right party Restore Britain, extending his reach to millions of users on the platform.
Last year trillionaire Musk injected himself into British politics by calling for another general election and the dissolution of Parliament while backing Tommy Robinson.
Elon Musk told attendees at far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally that they must fight against the what he branded the “woke mind virus” while calling for the “dissolution of Parliament.” He then told thousands of supporters that “violence is going to come to you, you will have no choice.”
He then said: “You either fight back or you die.”
Keir Starmer threatened X with being blocked in the UK earlier this year over concerns X’s Grok AI feature was making undressed images of people and sexualised images of children.
Under the Online Safety Act, tech firms must assess the risk of Brits seeing illegal content on their platforms and take appropriate steps to reduce the risk of users encountering it, and take it down quickly when they become aware of it.
The news comes after X’s AI bot came under fire over the summer when it was reported that the bot was allegedly creating “fully uncensored topless videos” of pop star Taylor Swift, without being prompted to.
In August tech outlet The Verge reported that the AI bot’s new ‘spicy’ video mode was “happy” to create “NSFW content and celebrity deepfakes”.
