By I. Hansana, Jadetimes News
The recent anti immigrant riots across the United Kingdom, sparked by false viral claims, serve as a stark example of how unchecked misinformation on social media can lead to real world violence. Despite authorities identifying a UK national as the suspect in a series of deadly stabbings targeting children, false claims about the attacker’s identity and background have continued to fuel anti immigrant sentiment and drive far right protests.
According to extremism researchers, these fake claims have been widely circulated on platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Law enforcement officials have directly linked this misinformation to the violence that has erupted in recent days, with rioters attacking mosques, setting cars ablaze, and chanting anti-Islamic slogans while clashing with police.
This situation is not an isolated incident but rather part of a broader pattern where online misinformation contributes to politically motivated violence. From the Rohingya genocide to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, false and misleading information has consistently been at the heart of significant political unrest and violence.
Despite years of calls from governments and civil society for social media platforms to curb inflammatory and hateful content, and despite promises from the platforms themselves to do more, the problem persists. In fact, the recent rollback of content moderation by some major platforms suggests that the issue of violence driven by misinformation may worsen before it improves.
For nearly a decade, critics have argued that social media platforms impose significant societal costs. These platforms have been accused of prioritizing corporate profits over users' mental health, enabling foreign interference, and failing to protect the public from these risks. An economist might describe these issues as negative externalities unintended byproducts of profit driven businesses that, if left unaddressed, society must either endure or mitigate at considerable expense.
This week’s events raise the troubling question of whether politically motivated violence fueled by baseless speculation has become an inevitable aspect of social media's impact, and whether society is being asked to accept this as a consequence of living in a digitally connected world.
While social media companies have invested in content moderation, their recent actions suggest a belief or perhaps a gamble that the public will tolerate a certain level of "pollution" from misinformation.
There are, however, signs of resistance. In the European Union, officials are seeking to hold social media companies accountable for spreading misinformation under the new Digital Services Act. In the UK, the Online Safety Act, which could come into force soon, would require social media platforms to remove illegal content.
In contrast, the United States has been slower to regulate platforms, hindered by congressional gridlock and legal frameworks that grant online platforms greater autonomy. However, the US Senate recently passed the Kids Online Safety Act, aiming to address mental health issues linked to social media use among teens.
It may be tempting to view social media’s role in the UK riots as merely reflecting existing political tensions or activism that would have occurred regardless of the platform. However, this perspective overlooks the possibility that some platforms have calculated that a certain level of misinformation driven violence is an acceptable societal cost.
