FILE PHOTO: Police officers stand near a broken microphone during an anti-immigration protest, in Rotherham, Britain, August 4, 2024. REUTERS/Hollie Adams/File Photo
(Reuters) - As Elon Musk's X battles to keep users in key markets, several British police forces are scaling back their presence on the global social media platform and one has abandoned it, reflecting concern about its role in promoting extremist views.
X, formerly Twitter, was used to spread disinformation this summer that sparked riots across Britain, and has reinstated British-based accounts that had been banned for extremist content. Critics say Musk's hands-off approach has allowed lies and hate speech to spread.
Reuters contacted all 45 territorial police forces and British Transport Police by email. Of the 33 to give details about their policy, 10 forces who collectively police nearly 13 million people said they were actively reviewing their presence on X, while 13 said they frequently reviewed all their social media platforms.
X has been a key communications channel for the British government, public services and even the royal family for more than 10 years. For emergency services, its succinct format and wide reach are effective in alerting users to everything from civil emergencies to missing people or road closures.
Yet of these 23 forces, six said they were cutting their presence to just one or two X accounts. One, North Wales Police, serving nearly 700,000 residents, stopped using X completely in August.
"We ... felt that the platform was no longer consistent with our values and therefore we have withdrawn our use of it," Chief Constable Amanda Blakeman said, adding that they would continue to monitor and review alternative platforms.
Also in Wales, Gwent Police said they were reviewing X because of questions about "the tone of the platform and whether that is the right place to reach our communities". All Gwent's individual officer accounts have been removed.
West Yorkshire Police said they were seeking to understand whether X would still help them reach their target audience and build trust in the community.
X did not respond to a request for comment.
RIOTS BASED ON DISINFORMATION PROMPT SCRUTINY OF X
The role of X and other platforms came under the spotlight in Britain this year when far-right and racist violence broke out after online posts falsely claimed that an attack in the northern English town of Southport, where three young girls were killed, was the work of an Islamist migrant.
Musk said on X that "civil war" was inevitable. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a British anti-Muslim activist known as Tommy Robinson, thanked Musk for giving him the opportunity on X to "push back on mainstream media lies and propaganda".
Musk has also backed right-wing activists who say there has been "two-tier policing" in Britain: police supposedly showing leniency to ethnic minority and left-wing protesters while punishing right-wing protesters swiftly.
Senior police officers say the idea is baseless and that it was in the public interest to clamp down swiftly on violent disorder. The head of London's Metropolitan Police has said the accusation puts officers at risk.
None of the police forces said their reviews were directly linked to the summer riots.
But Paul Reilly, senior lecturer in communications, media and democracy at the University of Glasgow, said many users had left X "in response to the volumes of hate speech, disinformation, and of course, Elon Musk's use of it too".
"That leads to organisations who are looking to reach those audiences moving with them to different platforms."
CHARITABLE, HEALTH AND EDUCATION BODIES DROP X
Of 32 ambulance and fire services surveyed by Reuters, nine said they had actively reviewed their presence on X. England's North East Ambulance Service announced in July that it had stopped posting there.
Individual forces within the emergency services said they were weighing up whether the platform's usefulness still justified their association with it.
In recent months, some British charities and health and educational establishments have said they will no longer post to X.
Musk has said he is defending freedom of speech and has likened Britain's anti-hate-speech laws to Soviet censorship. New online safety laws will soon require tech firms to remove illegal content from their platforms, including hate speech.
Digital analytics company Similarweb estimates that the number of iOS and Android app users of X in Britain fell in September by 17.7% in the space of a year to 10.4 million. Two years ago it was 15 million. Similarweb also estimated a 7.9% drop in the United States over the last year.
Britain's government continues to post on X but does not use it for paid communications. It does, however, advertise on Meta's Instagram and Facebook, a government source told Reuters.
Adam Hadley, executive director of the U.N.-backed Tech Against Terrorism initiative, said authorities should choose their social media carefully.
"Platforms are kind of political: they have identities, and therefore it's important where they post."
(Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
