Blaming Social Media for Political Violence in the UK Won’t Stop Future Riots
At a community centre in Southport, England, three young girls were stabbed to death last week by a 17-year-old suspect. Far-right groups on social media falsely labeled the suspect, born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, as a Muslim immigrant and asylum seeker, and others took to the street in violent riots across England and Northern Ireland. Some critics have been quick to misplace blame for the ensuing violence on social media companies, shifting responsibility from the rioters themselves and overlooking deeper societal issues that underpin the discord. While social media platforms might make a convenient whipping boy, reforms focused on Big Tech will do little to stop future political violence in the UK.
Many people focused on social media’s contribution to the recent violence. Most notably, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer made big social media networks the target of his ire in a televised response to the civil unrest. He stated, “Let me also say to large social media companies and those who run them: Violent disorder, clearly whipped up online, that is also a crime, it’s happening on your premises, and the law must be upheld everywhere.” But there are two big problems with his statement’s implications that “those who run” large social media companies bear substantial responsibility.
First, a lot of incendiary rhetoric and misinformation is not unlawful, and Ofcom, the agency responsible for implementing the newly enacted Online Safety Act, has not yet provided guidance on how platforms should respond to such content. While in hindsight it might seem obvious which content social media companies should take down, in the uncertainty of fast-moving events, content moderators cannot always readily determine which posts will ultimately prove to be false. Moreover, unlike authoritarian nations which embrace censorship to silence online speech that might threaten social order, most democratic nations rightfully prioritize free speech and rely on counter-speech, rather than suppression, to challenge harmful ideas.
Second, Starmer’s focus on large social media companies ignores the fact that many far-right extremists have gravitated to small fringe platforms. So even if the mainstream social media companies could perfectly moderate their services, the impact on far-right groups would be marginal. But blaming Big Tech when things go wrong is the standard playbook because it deflects from the government’s own failures.
Many tech critics claim that social media is the source of extremism. For example, New York Times columnist Zeynep Tufekci famously wrote that social media “may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century.” It turns out this statement is completely wrong—the empirical evidence shows fears about social media radicalizing its users are overblown—yet the belief persists. Similarly, the Noble Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, another outspoken tech industry critic who has previously called Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg a “dictator” and blamed social media for “inciting fear and anger and hatred,” told The Guardian that “[the rioters] wouldn’t have been able to find each other if social media didn’t cluster them together and isolate them to incite them further.” These tech critics seem to forget that riots and radicals pre-date social media. For example, the 1992 Los Angeles riots erupted in response to the Rodney King verdict not merely because of the communication tools available at the time but because the protesters shared profound anger and disillusionment with the justice system.
The violence the UK just witnessed is part of a long-standing problem. Islamophobic incidents in Britain doubled between 2012 and 2022, driven by far-right activities, global anti-Muslim attacks, political discourse, and the Brexit campaign. For example, the Vote Leave campaign aggressively focused on immigration, with strong anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim messaging, and after the EU referendum, there were 30 Islamophobic incidents reported in three days alone. The UK has made little progress in repairing the damage. The previous Conservative government’s anti-Muslim hatred working group was “on pause” for more than four years, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer has not yet taken significant steps to tackle Islamophobia.
Not everyone who has concerns about immigration is necessarily Islamophobic or supports extremists on the far right. Despite a 10 percent drop in net immigration over the last year and labour shortages in the food supply sector, public support for immigration is at an all-time low. For some people in the UK, those with immigrant roots are not truly British, especially if they are visibly non-white. Others are fine with multiculturism but worry about the impact of immigrants on wages and public services. Immigration is a complex issue, and solving it will require more than just demanding tech companies rewrite a few lines of code.
The root causes of political violence in the UK are deeply entrenched in societal and systemic issues. Blaming social media alone is not only simplistic but also counterproductive. Social media is merely a tool—a double-edged sword that can be used for both good and bad. Yes, society should reject hate speech both online and offline, individuals should become more resilient to all forms of misinformation, and social media platforms should continue to explore best practices for content moderation, but if the UK government wants to prevent future violence, it will have to confront its own failures.
Picture by Kirsty O’Connor/ No 10 Downing Street
