Ten Years After Jo Cox: Platforms Turn Safety Off

Ten years ago, on 16 June 2016, British Labour MP Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right extremist radicalized online.

Jo was a passionate advocate for a more tolerant, united society. Her murder was a devastating attack on democratic values and a warning about the dangers of online radicalization and hatred.

Her death was a foundational moment for CCDH. Imran Ahmed recognized that while extremism and violence have many causes, the internet was becoming a powerful engine for radicalization, hatred and division. He founded CCDH to hold technology companies accountable for the harms amplified by their platforms.

A decade later, with the lesson of Jo Cox’s murder as urgent as ever, some platforms are making the problem even worse.

New CCDH research, “Safety Off”, found that Meta’s decision to weaken enforcement of key safety policies has coincided with a dramatic rise in abuse directed at politicians on Facebook. We analyzed nearly eight million comments posted to politicians before and after Meta’s January 2025 policy changes. Abusive comments tripled in the six months following the rollback.

Violations of Meta’s Violence and Incitement policies quadrupled. Hateful Conduct violations also quadrupled, while Bullying and Harassment violations doubled. Politicians were subjected to death threats, racist abuse and messages encouraging suicide and serious illness.

These findings are not just statistics. They reflect a broader reality that when platforms choose to weaken safety protections, harmful content spreads quickly and the risks to public figures, democratic participation, and public safety increase.

This is particularly alarming in the UK, where online radicalization has already proved deadly. In the decade since Jo Cox’s murder, another sitting MP, Sir David Amess, was killed by an attacker who had also been significantly radicalized online.

The Online Safety Act was intended to ensure that tech companies take responsibility for the risks their products create. Instead, Meta was able to unilaterally weaken protections across Facebook and Instagram, despite the Act’s clear objective of improving user safety.

That’s a critical weakness in the UK’s online safety framework, and it needs fixing.

CCDH has partnered with other online safety and democracy organizations in the Online Safety Act Network to publish an “Elections Code of Practice” and “10 Point Plan to Strengthen the OSA.” CCDH calls on Government to strengthen the OSA in two ways:

• First, it should introduce a “no safety rollbacks” clause. Platforms should not be able to weaken existing safety protections without proving users will remain at least as safe as before.
• Second, establish minimum standards for platform terms of service. Companies should not be able to rewrite their rules to permit more abuse, hate and dangerous content while claiming compliance.

These reforms would not prevent innovation or legitimate debate. They would simply ensure that platforms cannot seek business advantages by exposing users, politicians and communities to greater harm.

Ten years after Jo Cox’s murder, we remember her life, her values and her commitment to bringing people together.

But remembrance alone is not enough.

The conditions that helped radicalize her killer have not gone away. In important respects, they have worsened. If we are serious about protecting democracy and preventing future tragedies, we must ensure that technology companies cannot switch safety off whenever they choose.

Join CCDH to push for accountability.