In a now-deleted post, one X user shared a screenshot of a LinkedIn post from a man who claimed to be the parent of two children present at the attack. . . . Meanwhile on TikTok, search results for “Southport” recommended “Ali al-Shakati arrested in Southport” as a suggested query that “Others searched for”.
TFA is about "bot-like accounts" but the UK issue seems to be with authentic users. Given evidence of a problem broader than just X, what makes X more of a natsec issue than externally engineered social network applications in general?
> Self-described ‘news’ accounts rapidly spread falsehoods around the perpetrator. One viral narrative falsely named him as “Ali al-Shakati”, a Muslim migrant new to the UK. This was later debunked by the police. Nonetheless, false claims surrounding the attack quickly garnered millions of views online, galvanised by anti-Muslim and anti-migrant activists and promoted by platforms’ recommender systems.
"It is illegal for me to explain my position" is some grade-A bullshit my friend. I'm still laughing at the sheer chutzpah at trying to make that argument. It's got that "I can't fight you because my fists are classified as deadly weapons by the government" level of teenager argument.
I'm just saying that the comment saying it's illegal to talk about this stuff in his country is entirely plausible, there are lots of examples of people being arrested and jailed for saying the wrong things about this situation.
Well then quit beating around the bush and say what you mean. How are the actions of a Christian, UK-born citizen relevant to the Muslim refugees who were being harassed and abused by British race rioters?
So your point is that the rioters aren't misled or ignorant, they're knowingly and voluntarily committing acts of violence & thuggery in the streets against innocent people on purpose? Not exactly a sympathetic bunch if so. ;)
The rumours saying that a muslim immigrant had committed the stabbing were not in any sense "true"
My great grandfather came from what is now Czechia. If I commit a crime would one blame immigration? Would rumours that an Eastern european committed it be "true" ?
The riots were driven by racism and anti immigrant sentiment inflated by social media rumour-mongering.
Yet there were multiple instances of rioters checking whether car passengers were white or non-white with the threat of violence [0], mobs attempting to pull foreign origin drivers out of their car [1], and multiple attempts to burn down hotels that housed asylum seekers [2][3].
In most these cases, they were aimed at Brown/"Muslim looking" people, with the slur "Paki" heavily utilized.
All of those are felonies that would be tried as attempted murder in the US (and absolutely will be in the UK as well).
[0] - https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/from-rumours-to...
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/business/uk-riots-social-...
[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/07/31/southport-st...