12 August, 2024
'I don't wish to fish in that particular pond anymore.'
A Labour minister has launched a brutal takedown of Elon Musk and his X platform, formerly known as Twitter, because the site has become a place of ‘misery’.
Jess Phillips, Minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said that while she had previously been addicted to X, it had now become a ‘place of misery’ which is why she has decided to delete the app from her phone.
Her comments come after the billionaire owner of X, Elon Musk, came in for criticism for allowing misinformation, fake news and extremist content to be shared on the platform in the wake of far-right riots which took place in towns and cities across the UK.
Musk has also been criticised for attacking Prime Minister Keir Starmer and for stoking tensions by claiming the country is heading for civil war.
Phillips made the comments at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she said: “Fundamentally for me now I think that I am sort of done with it, I don’t wish to fish in that particular pond anymore.”
She went on to add: “I used to be massively addicted to Twitter, I have got a very addictive personality, I was massively addicted to it.” But she added: “The only power we now have over what is becoming a bit despotic is that we opt out of it, you vote with your feet in this instance rather than pen and paper.”
Following the horrific killings of three young girls in Southport, the far-right were spreading misinformation about the identity of the attacker, claiming that he had arrived in the UK via a small boat with a number of far-right social media accounts claiming that the attacker was Muslim, a migrant, refugee or foreigner. Much of this misinformation circulated on X, as far-right rioters attacked mosques, assaulted police officers and targeted hotels with asylum seekers.
The knifeman was later revealed to be Cardiff-born Axel Rudakubana.
In the days after the attack, as the Prime Minister sought to restore order and tackle the far-right rioters, Musk became embroiled in a row with Keir Starmer and British authorities after claiming that ‘civil war’ was ‘inevitable in Britain’ and tried to claim, without evidence, that the police response to the riots had been ‘one sided’.
Prime Minister Starmer has warned that ‘social media is not a law free zone’, and signalled that the government will review social media laws, after the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said ministers should check whether existing legislation to protect against online harms is fit for purpose.
The Prime Minister has also said that the courts would crack down on those who incited violence online.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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