UK attorney general tells department to stop using X amid disinformation concerns

The UK attorney general has instructed his office to stop posting on X, making it the first government department to abandon the platform amid mounting concerns over its role in inciting violence and spreading disinformation [1]. Richard Hermer’s office last posted on X on Friday, and officials have been told to no longer use the site except for the specific purpose of countering disinformation there [1]. The decision follows disorder in Southampton and Belfast earlier this month, which deepened Hermer’s worry that X, more than other platforms, is being used by bad actors to divide communities [1]. Eleven police officers were injured in Southampton during violence linked to protests over the case of Henry Nowak, who was handcuffed as he lay dying from a stab wound [1]. Six days later, far-right activists called demonstrations in Belfast after a stabbing attack for which a 30-year-old refugee from Sudan was charged with attempted murder; one Northern Irish MP likened the disorder to a “pogrom” after minority-ethnic homes were targeted and health workers were stopped and questioned about their background [1]. Hermer’s move marks a break from Downing Street’s repeated defence of departmental use of X, whose owner Elon Musk has called for the UK government to be overthrown [1]. The platform has faced persistent controversy since Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 and rebranded it to X in July 2023 [3]. Under his ownership, the site has struggled with viral misinformation, hate speech, and child pornography [3]. In a speech this week, Hermer said: “We simply cannot let a very small group of crypto-funded millionaires of this world get away with using the debate about the ECHR or drawing closer to the EU to sow more division in this country – we cannot allow them to draw lines between our communities” [1]. Ministers plan to amend the Online Safety Act to require social media firms to act more quickly to remove inflammatory content during riots or other crises, but the changes will not take effect until mid-July at the earliest [1]. In the interim, the government will leave any official reprimand of X to Ofcom, the media regulator, which is awaiting a first quarterly compliance report from the platform that is not due for at least two months [1]. On Monday, Downing Street announced a ban on the use of many social media sites for under-16s, going further than a similar move enacted earlier this year in Australia [1]. Concerns about X’s capacity to amplify unrest are not confined to the UK. During the Gaza war, the platform was a vector for what The New York Times described as a “deluge of online propaganda and disinformation” that was “larger than anything seen before” [4]. Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs commissioned a covert influence campaign that used hundreds of fake accounts on X, Facebook, and Instagram to post pro-Israel comments, with ChatGPT generating many of the posts [4]. The platform’s history as a political flashpoint also includes the January 2021 suspension of Donald Trump’s account after his tweets helped incite the US Capitol attack; Musk reinstated the account in November 2022 [2].