Saturday, August 10, 2024
Culprit or scapegoat?
They remind us that false information which spread on social media about the identity of the alleged Southport knife attacker has been seen as playing a role in sparking the recent violence, leading some to call for tougher regulation:
Commentators have been particularly concerned about the impact of content on X, formerly Twitter, whose owner Elon Musk has been heavily criticised for his own posts about the disorder.
The billionaire has engaged with posts by far-right figure Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, suggested that civil war in the UK was “inevitable”, and retweeted a fake Daily Telegraph headline suggesting rioters would be sent to detention camps in the Falkland Islands.
The Online Safety Act will, for the first time, make firms legally responsible for keeping users safe when they use their services.
It will require platforms to put in place clear and proportionate safety measures to prevent illegal and other harmful content from appearing and spreading on their sites.
The biggest platforms could face billions of pounds in fines if they do not comply.
Named managers could be held criminally liable in some instances, and sites may face having their access limited in the most severe cases.
However, as Marina Hyde points out in the Guardian, there are much wider considerations, which suggest that confining the government's response to throwing the rioters in prison and toughening up the Online Safety Act won't really cut it. She writes:
How about: address ever-increasing wealth inequality? If that seems a weird answer, then maybe the wrong questions are being asked. Britain has just witnessed the worst far-right street violence since the 1970s. As the FT reports, seven out of 10 of the most deprived areas in the UK saw riots this past fortnight. Placing asylum hotels in these areas was the decision of the previous Conservative government. Who has this profited – other than the private companies that have raked in huge sums?
It’s not clear at all that the unrest is over, or whether further flare-ups are in the post. But they likely will be if people treat this as a social-media story. Nor does it bode too well to find the chancellor forever sounding like her predecessors. “When household budgets are stretched, families have to make difficult choices,” Rachel Reeves explained recently. “And government needs to do the same.” And yet, it’s just possible that the answer to entrenched problems is not continuity solutions.
There is, of course, no excuse for the violence that has erupted in our towns and cities over the last few weeks, but nobody can deny that one of the reasons these far-right agitators have been able to get such a reaction on social media is because they have struck a chord amongst many ordinary, law-abiding people. You only have to look at the memes doing the rounds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, often posted by non-political citizens to see that that is the case.
People feel that they are being overlooked by the system, that those running the country do not have their best interests at heart. And decisions taken by the new government over the two-child benefit and the winter fuel allowance are just reinforcing that impression. Agitators are exploiting this discontent.
By all means fix social media, but let's have some action on wealth equality as well.
Comments:
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Your last sentence is bang on. This fiscal responsibility issue is a chain round the countries development. After WW2 the country had huge debt but rebuilding started. We are at this position now.to get out of austerity. Fiscal chains must be removed.
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