Musk's misinformation made the Southport horrors worse

It’s unlikely that Elon Musk has ever heard of Southport, far less visited it. He has five or six companies to run, after all, and has been busy this week sounding off about Venezuela, Kamala Harris, puberty blockers, and why the legacy media lie to you.

- ALAN RUSBRIDGER

So it’s probable that some ugly riots in a seaside town somewhere in northwest England will not have registered with the strange genius who may well be the richest man in the world. And it’s equally probable that, if you told Musk that he was in some way responsible for these riots, 5,000 miles away from the seven homes he owns/owned in California, he would scoff.

But that’s how it is. When Musk decided to splash out $44bn (£35bn) to buy what was then called Twitter, he took ultimate responsibility for the speech of 350 million-odd users of the platform. And Twitter – now called X – is where a foul virus spread in the wake of the horrendous stabbings of numerous children in Southport on Monday. That virus led to the rioting the very next day – and since. And Musk enabled it.

There are two things you need to know about Musk before we delve into the events of those two days. The first is that he is as close to a free-speech absolutist as it’s possible to find. He may draw the line at illegal speech – if only because assorted law enforcement and regulatory authorities would have him – but otherwise, on X, anything goes. It can be hateful, inflammatory, racist and/or plain untrue, and he couldn’t care less.

One of the first things he did when buying Twitter was to scrap or downsize the teams that tried, however ineffectively, to make it a place of decent and honest discourse. Proven liars and conspiracy spreaders like Alex Jones were welcomed back with open arms.

The second is that Musk shares with his hero Donald Trump an utter disdain for what he sneeringly calls the legacy media. Only this week he reposted, to nearly 200 million followers, this, from David Sacks, another friend of Trump: “The biggest divide in the electorate is between people who get their information from independent media and those who are brainwashed by the MSM (mainstream media).” It was seen by 4 million people.