Yvette Cooper hits out at Elon Musk’s management of X

Labour’s Yvette Cooper has criticised Elon Musk’s management of X, saying the tech billionaire’s social media company is being used to “continually promote anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate”.

The shadow home secretary also accused Rishi Sunak of giving a “free pass” to tech executives who are “allowing their platforms to harbour hate”.

Ahead of new action from the Government this week aimed at countering extremism, Labour said ministers were not doing enough to tackle hateful content online.

The party singled out X for criticism, claiming that hate speech is able to circulate on the platform with little hindrance.

Formerly known as Twitter, the social media website was bought by Mr Musk – one of the world’s richest men and a self-styled “free speech absolutist” – in October 2022.

Labour said that within minutes of searching X this week, party staff were able to find “vast reams” of hateful anti-Semitic and Islamophobic content on the site.

Hate speech

A dossier shared with The Telegraph includes posts in which users say “something has to be done about the jewish problem” and calling for “all mosques [to be] flattened”. Other posts praise Adolf Hitler and promote anti-Semitic and Islamophobic memes, including what Labour described as “dangerous tropes about Jews and Muslims”.

In one post a user said: “Muslims in this country are out of control!!! They want rounding up and dealing with!”.

In March 2023, research by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue think-tank suggested that the weekly average of anti-Semitic tweets on X had increased by more than 100 per cent since Mr Musk’s acquisition of the platform.

Mr Sunak hosted Mr Musk at last year’s AI Safety Summit, interviewing him on stage about the future of technology.

Labour called the event a “tech-bro love-in” and claimed that the Prime Minister had failed to hold Mr Musk to account for standards on X.

Ms Cooper said: “We are seeing an appalling and unacceptable rise in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the UK which is too often driven by a surge in online hate and threats.

“Yet instead of strengthening their response to criminal levels of hate and extremism, X has downgraded it. And instead of challenging the tech executives who are allowing their platforms to harbour hate, the Government has abandoned its Hate Crime Strategy and is giving the tech execs a free pass.”

She added: “If the Prime Minister is serious about tackling the hateful and damaging extremism corroding Britain’s communities, he should be raising this directly with Elon Musk whose platform is now being used continually to promote anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate.”

In January, Mr Musk claimed that external audits carried out by his company showed “that there is the least amount of anti-Semitism on X, if you look at all the other social apps”.

“If somebody says something that is false, especially on our platform, you can then reply to it with a correction,” he said.

“So if somebody tries to push a falsehood, like Holocaust denial, they can immediately be corrected. And you can’t get rid of the tag.”

X and the Government were both contacted for comment.