Spread of far-right hate drives Labour MPs off X

Labour MPs have begun quitting X in alarm at the state of the site, with one saying Elon Musk had turned it into "a megaphone for foreign adversaries and far-right fringe groups".

- Eleni Courea

Over the weekend newly elected MPs raised growing concerns in WhatsApp groups about the role X had played in the spread of misinformation amid far-right riots in parts of England and Northern Ireland.

Two Labour MPs are known to have told colleagues they were leaving the platform. One of them, Noah Law, has disabled his account. Other MPs who still use X have begun examining alternatives including Threads, owned by Facebook's parent company, Meta, and the open-source platform Bluesky.

Musk, who bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X, has been embroiled in a public spat with Keir Starmer since the tech billionaire suggested that the riots meant "civil war is inevitable" in the UK. Musk has been criticised for failing to crack down on misinformation on the platform as well as sharing fake news himself.

In an article in today's Guardian, a former Twitter executive, Bruce Daisley, says Musk should face "personal sanctions" and even an "arrest warrant" if he continues to stir up public disorder online.

Over the weekend Jess Phillips, a Home Office minister who has more than 700,000 followers on X, said she wanted to scale back her use of the platform as it had become a "bit despotic" and "a place of misery".

Another minister also said they had reduced their posts on X and that Musk's actions had made them "very reluctant to return".