Report: UK Police Reducing Content on X

Improve the News Foundation -

Facts

  • A new study conducted by Reuters over three months up to Nov. 13 shows that several UK police forces are reducing their content on social media platform X compared to a year prior.[1]
  • Reuters claims that, out of 44 territorial police forces and the British Transport Police, eight had "noticeably fewer posts," including a 95% reduction by West Midlands Police and an approximately 75% decrease by Lancashire Police.[1]
  • Derbyshire Police's last post on X came on Aug. 12, while North Wales Police announced that it was leaving the platform the same month, claiming it was "no longer consistent" with its values.[2][3]
  • The UK House of Commons Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee reportedly plans to invite X owner Elon Musk to its inquiry into social media, misinformation, and harmful algorithms, to which Musk said he would summon British lawmakers over allegations of "their censorship and threats to American citizens."[4][5]
  • Following the stabbing of three girls in Southport in August, Musk claimed UK police "seem[ed] one-sided" in favor of Muslim communities, and last weekend described the UK as a "tyrannical police state." In response, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office said Musk's comments had "no justification."[6][7]
  • Organizations that have left X since Musk took over what was then Twitter in 2022 include The Guardian and National Public Radio (NPR), while Disney, IBM, Warner Bros. Discovery, Lionsgate Entertainment, and Comcast stopped advertising on it late last year.[8][9]

Sources: [1]Reuters, [2]Independent, [3]X (a), [4]Verity (a), [5]Verity (b), [6]BBC News, [7]X (b), [8]Tech.co and [9]Adweek.

Narratives

  • Left narrative, as provided by MSNBC and The Guardian. With Bluesky on the march, and X's increasingly hate-filled content only encouraged by Trump's election victory, we're likely at the beginning of a dramatic shift in the social media landscape. Developed by former Twitter co-founder Jack Dempsey, Bluesky is a nostalgic return to the days when online discourse and differences of opinion were not dominated by algorithm-enhanced disinformation, which helped catalyze the violence witnessed this summer.
  • Right narrative, as provided by The Western Journal and GB News. The UK government cares more about suppressing free speech than it does tackling real crime and protecting the public. Starmer's war against Musk is nothing more than an ideological fantasy undermining the very principles of liberty that Britain has championed throughout history. Woke culture and the socialist crusade against X and individual freedoms will, despite the best efforts of the establishment, fail in the UK just like it did at the ballot box in the US.