Elon Musk has been accused of amplifying anti-migrant content on X to millions of viewers amid disorder in Belfast.
Unrest has broken out in the Northern Irish capital after a brutal knife attack took place in north Belfast on Monday. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) charged Hadi Alodid, 30 from Sudan, with attempted murder and he has since been remanded in custody.
The force has called for calm across the country after mobs set homes, a bus and cars on fire in Belfast in anti-immigration protests.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a non-profit company that looks at hate speech and disinformation, analysed a sample of 92 posts about demonstrations ongoing in Belfast from three key figures: Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe.
The three influencers had managed to generate a total of 115,391,726 views across their accounts, with Elon Musk accounting for 55 per cent of all views.
The X owner’s posts accounted for 64,002,842 views across the sample, more than the 51 million Lowe and Robinson amassed between the two of them without his amplification.
Musk repeatedly amplified posts from Lowe and Robinson by quoting their posts, contributing to their view counts, according to the CCDH.
The social media magnate reposted a call from Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, for “mass protest” across the UK and stated: “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change”. His repost added 9.2 million views to the original 10.8 million garnered by Robinson.
At one point, Lowe called for the “death penalty, mass deportations, end mass immigration” as he declared: “The barbarians are already inside the gates” to 1.7 million views on X.
Imran Ahmed, Founder & CEO of CCDH, said that the organisation’s research showed Musk was using the Belfast attack to amplify anti-migrant narratives.
“As the owner of X and its most-followed user, Elon Musk has unparalleled power to shape what people see online. With that power comes responsibility for the content and conduct his platform promotes,” he said.
“Yet our research shows that he used the Belfast tragedy to amplify anti-migrant narratives to millions of users, prompting endless calls for violence. While communities dealt with the consequences of brutality and disorder, no individual played a bigger role in spreading this content on X than Musk himself.”
The organisation also looked at 3,932 responses to these posts that called for violence against immigrants including calls for arson, lynchings, executions and beheadings. Of these responses, 2,685 were to Robinson’s posts while 1,008 were to Lowe’s and 239 were to Musk’s.
The three accounts studied received an equivalent of 98 violent replies an hour in the two days following the Belfast attack, the CCDH calculated.
Ofcom issued a warning to Big Tech firms on Tuesday that illegal content going viral online can “pose a serious threat to public safety”, citing the riots which broke out after the Southport murders in 2024.
A letter from Dame Melanie Dawes in response to the riots in 2024 stated that there was a “clear connection” between platforms disseminating material which called for violent action with the disorder seen on UK streets.
The Independent has contacted representatives of X, Rupert Lowe and Tommy Robinson for comment.
