The spread of conspiracy theories and misinformation on digital platforms has stoked the violence that has affected the UK for the past week. For many in the government (and beyond), at the centre of the blame is X – formerly Twitter – and its owner Elon Musk, who has entered into a personal row with Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the disorder.
 
UK policymakers say they have warned technology companies ‘not to peddle the harm of those who seek to damage and divide our society.’ But as those same policymakers return to the same platforms to publicize those very warnings, and their cabinet colleagues use them to thank local communities and law enforcement, it is increasingly apparent: technologies like X are vital pieces of social, political and cultural infrastructure, and the outsourcing of that infrastructure comes at a high price.

A new kind of politics

The myth of the previous two decades was that these giant digital platforms were apolitical. Technology companies that had grown to become some of the largest companies in the world through their ability to target advertising better than anyone else were not, paradoxically, able to change political hearts and minds. Related content Towards a global approach to digital platform regulation

Speaking in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg described the idea that content on Facebook might have influenced voters deciding between Clinton and Trump as ‘a pretty crazy idea’. He has since expressed regret that this was too dismissive, and along with most platforms took steps to assuage policymakers. In 2018, Facebook launched an archive of political adverts served on the platform in a bid to boost transparency. Google followed suit the year after, while Twitter went a step further and banned political advertising altogether. TikTok, too, has policy against political advertising. 

Critics argue that not only are these policies insufficient to mitigate the intense politicization of these technology platforms, but that the platforms’ very design manifests a new kind of politics. A politics that measures its impact using the very same metrics that advertisers rely on: clicks, views and engagement. Ten minutes on a social media platform will show you as much – contrary to past claims by the companies that run them, they are foundational pieces of political infrastructure, a crucible in which billions come to form and share their politics.

Nevertheless, the message from industry was clear: technology companies were striving to be neutral, apolitical entities.

Elon Musk’s X

Since 2022, X has bucked that trend. Musk – the most followed user on the platform – has not been shy of wading into politics. The 2019 ban on political advertising was lifted in January last year. Lawsuits targeting X’s critics have been filed (and thrown out). At the time of writing, a post warning that ‘Kamala [Harris] is quite literally a communist’ is the ‘highlight’ at the top of Musk’s profile.
  
In the last week, he has amplified messages decrying the UK’s response to the recent disorder and posted that ‘civil war is inevitable’ and ‘#TwoTierKier’ – a hashtag associated with the claim that under Starmer, UK law enforcement has dealt more leniently with violence by left-wing groups than those on the right. It is an accusation rejected by the prime minister and the Metropolitan Police chief. One post – now deleted – re-shared a doctored Daily Telegraph headline about internment camps for rioters posted by the co-leader of Britain First, a right-wing group whose accounts had been suspended in 2017.

The urgency with which decision-makers feel updates to social media regulation are necessary has heightened in recent days, though whether these sanctions will be enough is doubtful.

Musk’s use of the platform he owns has been met with outrage. UK parliamentary voices described his comments on the violence in the UK as ‘pretty deplorable’ and having ‘no justification’. Taoiseach Simon Harris has warned that new financial sanctions and personal liabilities on social media companies will be put in place in Ireland. Sparring with the European Commission earlier this year, Musk said he was ‘look[ing] forward to a very public battle in court’.

‘Be our guest’, replied commissioner Thierry Breton.
 
X has been found to be in breach of the European Digital Services Act. Musk refutes the findings – it was this that prompted the exchange with the EU. It seems likely that the company will fall foul of the UK’s own Online Safety Act when it comes into force later this year. The urgency with which decision-makers feel updates to social media regulation are necessary has heightened in recent days, though whether these sanctions will be enough to clean up the sprawling ecosystem of information-sharing technologies we use each day is doubtful.

Technology unshackled

Western democracies are finally confronting a hard truth: the infrastructure on which their countries’ politics and information-sharing takes place is increasingly misaligned with their values. Technologies that were once seen as harmless, or perhaps even value-positive to the spread of liberal or Western ideas, have become unshackled: vulnerable to misuse, difficult to corral or to regulate, and no longer defaulting to comfortable norms.

Western democracies are finally confronting a hard truth: the infrastructure on which their countries’ politics and information-sharing takes place is increasingly misaligned with their values.

Alternatives are non-existent: there is no BBC social media platform, for instance. In the wake of counter-protests on Wednesday, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper thanked law enforcement on – where else? – X. The post was subsequently shared through the Prime Minister’s account on the same platform. 
 
While the reckoning of the last week may feel new to a UK audience, these challenges are old news elsewhere. Clashes with social media platforms are commonplace in global majority countries. Government officials in the Philippines, in Sri Lanka, and in Senegal have in the past complained about the challenges they felt they faced engaging with major platforms.
 
Those platforms together may account for the vast majority of information sharing by their citizens, but they often lack local staff or knowledge of local culture, norms or language. Some states – or ‘markets’, to use the industry term – could not historically rely on the same level of engagement that the UK might have done in its dealings with technology companies. 

While the reckoning of the last week may feel new to a UK audience, these challenges are old news elsewhere.

Bangladesh could not expect a swift response from its technology providers during its recent political violence, which was discussed and coordinated online. Meta – the company behind Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram – does not currently have an office in Bangladesh. Nor does TikTok. The nearest Google office to Dhaka is in Hyderabad in India some 2,000 kilometres away.

Rather, the government pulled the plug: the internet was shut down in its entirety for ten days – a catastrophe for local businesses, journalists, and communities dependent on digital channels to communicate.