A year after the UK summer riots, X continues to be a breeding ground for violent anti-Muslim & anti-migrant hate.

CCDH researchers revisited the accounts of the 6 hateful influencers who were spreading lies about the Southport tragedy on X.

We found:

• These accounts hosted 4,379 posts promoting violence against Muslims & migrants.
• These posts violated X’s policies about promoting violence.
• X is allowing these accounts to benefit from X premium.
• X is still failing to respond to hateful and misleading claims in emergency situations.

Content Warnings: anti-Muslim hate, anti-migrant hate, and calls for violence.

An introduction from CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed

One year ago, during a Taylor Swift–themed dance class attended by 26 young people, a 17-year-old British citizen walked into the studio and murdered three children: seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, six-year-old Bebe King, and nine-year-old Alice Aguiar. Ten others were injured in the attack.

In a moment of utter shock and mourning across the UK, a few high-profile hate-filled figures sought to swiftly hijack the tragedy to spread false claims online, by falsely identifying the perpetrator as a Muslim asylum seeker. These lies spread rapidly and widely on social media platforms, in particular X, fuelling violent anti-migrant and anti-Muslim riots across the UK.

In August 2024, CCDH reported that while affected communities and local authorities struggled to contain the violence both online and offline, social media platforms stood by and, in some cases, financially profited from the terror of these events. X, in particular, emerged as a crucial vector of false information and hate. Rather than taking steps to mitigate harmful and illegal content, Elon Musk, owner of X, personally amplified conspiracy theories, warning of an impending “civil war” in Britain to his hundreds of millions of followers.

Our researchers also found that hate preachers who had been banned from Twitter before being reinstated by Musk were receiving millions of views per day. The platform was monetising their hate, running ads alongside content inciting violence, including posts encouraging mobs to “permanently remove Islam from Great Britain.”

One year on, we return to ask: what has changed? Have any of the accounts that spread lies and fuelled real-world violence faced consequences?

What we found is deeply disturbing.

Of the six prominent accounts identified by CCDH in the wake of the riots (Tommy Robinson, Paul Golding, Ashlea Simon, Laurence Fox, Andrew Tate, and Calvin Robinson), we found that each remains active on X. Today, their posts are still routinely followed by streams of replies containing threats, incitements to violence, and open expressions of hatred toward Muslims and migrants. These appear to remain largely unchecked, despite clearly violating X’s own rules which prohibit such harmful content.

This new research makes one thing clear: one year on from the Southport riots, X remains the crucial hub for hate-filled lies and incitement of violence targeting migrants and Muslims. Anti-migrant and anti-Muslim influencers such as Tommy Robinson continue to play a central role in triggering waves of violent rhetoric. Their posts serve as rallying points for other hateful extremists, all too often leading to real-world harm.

This cannot be allowed to continue. Social media platforms must be held accountable and compelled to enforce their own rules with consistency and integrity. If they fail to do so, governments have a responsibility to step in by introducing and enforcing strong regulation that confronts the profit-driven amplification of violent and hateful content. Without intervention, the cycle of hate and violence will not just persist, it will deepen. The harm to targeted communities will grow and metastasize, with devastating consequences for British society and for all our communities.