Tuesday 6 August 2024

Musk is a dangerous man

The horrendous disturbances we’ve been seeing in various places over the last few days have been fomented, organised, and triggered on social media. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. Mainstream media, particularly The Daily Mail, can't claim total innocence either. These are the vehicles used by Farage and others on the right and the far right to amplify and spread the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim message that we’ve been seeing for decades.  One ex-police chief has likened the 'protests' to terrorism and for some Asian communities, it must seem like that.

The police are starting to identify and arrest those responsible. Offenders are beginning to appear in magistrates courts, pleading guilty to violent disorder, theft, burglary, and so on, and being remanded in custody awaiting sentencing. They can hardly do otherwise, their crimes are captured on video and are undeniable. Violent disorder carries a maximum of five years by the way. 

There is clearly a controlling mind behind it all but whether or not that is one person or a loose collection of neo-Nazi groups isn’t clear. They are probably going to face charges too.  The only bright spot is the way local people have quickly come together to clean up the mess left by these violent idiots.

These foot soldiers - just like the 6 Jan mob in America - are the mindless minority and are going to be made an example of while the people who have spent years whipping up the mobs will probably get away Scot-free.

But back to the social media point. Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist who exposed a lot of the Cambridge Analytica stuff after the Brexit referendum and was sued by Aaron Banks tweeted about Elon Musk and that he "had no protection from Section 230 in the UK."

I had no idea what Section 230 was but looked it up. It's a part of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996, which provides immunity for online computer services from liability for third-party content generated by its users. These are the actual words:

"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

I assume this is all down to the First Amendment to the American Constitution which gives an absolute right to free speech - accepting only the legal consequences of a civil action if you libel somebody and they then take offence.  However, Cadwalladr claims (and I assume she's right) in the UK these platforms are regarded as publishers and must accept some legal responsibilities.

Both Starmer and Yvette Cooper the Home Secretary have hinted that social media businesses will be investigated but this is a very complicated area of the law and I'm not sure the real culprits will ever be fully brought to book. 

What is abundantly clear is that Musk is not a fit and proper person to run Twitter. He is a dangerous man.

The Tweet that Cadwalladr was referring to was one by Musk in response to this one:

He thinks civil war in this country is "inevitable" and later tweeted the implication that Kier Starmer supported some kind of two-tier policing and that the rioters must have had a genuine grievance:

This is totally irresponsible for a man in his position with 192 million followers on Twitter. No doubt some will use his words as encouragement.

Somebody has collected together a few of the occasions when Musk has claimed civil war is coming in Europe:

It looks as if he actually wants a civil war somewhere. 

I hope that the government begins to look seriously at social media companies like Twitter and Facebook and finds a way to bring them into line with TV and radio broadcasters with a clear responsibility to ensure content is properly monitored and anything harmful is quickly taken down.


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