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Elon Musk’s misinformation machine made the horrors of Southport, a small town in the UK, much worse

Archived version

Within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass-stabbings in Southport, a seaside town in northwest England, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati”—a Muslim migrant to the UK—alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services.

None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27m impressions on social media.

The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, with nearly 10m followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat”—even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”.

One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may be now run out of an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media”—you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are.

[…]

kbal ,
@kbal@fedia.io avatar

The problem isn’t merely that Elon Musk is manifestly unsuited to the job of unelected social media tsar. The problem is that no one should have that job.

apotheotic ,

Agreed, but its doubly problematic that the social media tsar is a fascist

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

I went on FB a while ago just to see how bad it was, and it’s so horrible. I know the article is about Twitter, but all social media is like this. Everything everywhere is just bots feeding that everything is scary.

I live in Seattle, and according to any facebook post by bot or person it’s just a constant warzone of homeless people and liberals just setting fire and causing crime. It’s so disheartening. I have no idea how to fix it either, it’s just outright lies, and terrified suburbanites just eat it up.

TheOneCurly ,

I tried for a while fighting in my local facebook groups, but it just served to make me mad and didn’t put a dent in the constant barrage of nonsense. I started blocking them all and finally just stopped using facebook entirely.

It’s sad since those are really the only online groups for my town. I just have no interest in engaging in the local community now.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Local groups are the absolute worst. I realized exactly what you did, that it’s the absolute worst most horrid people in my area all together. Nextdoor was even worse. I remember (no shit) a picture of a black man walking down a sidewalk with a caption “Anyone know why he’s here?”. I was horrified that my neighbors were like that, just the absolute horrible racism in doing that.

Devi ,

My local nextdoor has an issue with non white people in vans. Like normal builders eating their lunch and Sharon down the road is posting “Anyone know why this man is here? Stayed there for 45 minutes, very suspicious, might be stealing dogs”.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

I legit chuckled at the ending. Because that is exactly how they write comments. Some stupid fucking thing in their brain, “Black people steal dogs”. They heard somewhere that a dog went missing and their critical thinking skills go “The boogeyman black person obviously did it”

TheRtRevKaiser ,
@TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org avatar

It’s practically a guarantee that this Sharon’s dog is the most obnoxious, poorly trained little shit to ever walk the earth on four legs, too. Nobody wants your fucking dog, Sharon, it’s an unholy terror.

BCsven ,

People with too much time. My wife had a busy kid drop off/pickup / work schedule. If she was done work early she would park a block away from school and sleep in the car till dismissal time…some Karen came out complaining she can’t sleep in her car and needed to leave. lol

Devi ,

Awful woman

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

but all social media is like this.

I’m not a bot, and we’re talking on social media.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

*corporate. There’s a profit motive for them to encourage the behavior and be addictive

Frederic ,

Imagine in Canada, where real news media like TV, newspaper, etc, cannot be used by Meta (FB, IG, etc). So in a Canadian facebook feed, you only have conspiracy and right-wing false info, that’s it. For the people who took their info from FB, they are flooded by fake/alarming news.

scrubbles ,
@scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech avatar

Unintended consequences for sure. No news is a good idea on FB, except then all you have is fake BS. Man people will always find ways to make things worse.

Teknikal ,
@Teknikal@eviltoast.org avatar

I’ve never had a Facebook account but been questioned by UK police who demanded my non existent Facebook account maybe a dozen times.

Unfortunately I’m now on benifit having lost my job and they keep bring up damn Facebook and trying to make me make an account.

There’s something badly wrong here, don’t use Facebook imo I honestly think it’s some kind of trap at this point.

Gsus4 ,
@Gsus4@mander.xyz avatar

Some kids once told me that if you’re not on shitbook you don’t exist…maybe they’re cops now.

Gsus4 ,
@Gsus4@mander.xyz avatar

We were lucky the KGB didn’t have access to social media tech

…were.

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