Elon Musk’s X platform fueled far-right riots in Ireland, experts say disinformation in Ireland and played a crucial part in riots last month in the country’s capital Dublin.
On Nov. 23, some 200 civilians and riot police clashed in central Dublin as protesters released their wrath following a stabbing incident earlier in the day that left many people injured, including a 5-year-old child who was hospitalized with serious injuries.
False rumors on social media claimed the stabbings were carried out by an illegal immigrant. According to the Irish Times, the suspected assailant was a naturalized Irish citizen originating from Algeria.
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he violence, which saw a tram and a bus set on fire and stores looted, was fueled in part by far-right local actors with large followings on X, which was known as Twitter when Musk bought it.
“What we saw at the beginning of the riot was what started as a protest, you know, either organized by the far-right or if it wasn’t organized by the far-right, the far-right wasn’t far behind,” said Matthew Donoghue, an assistant professor of social policy at University College Dublin.
“We saw attacks on the [police] cordon and the crime scene, which are organized and orchestrated acts that need a significant amount of background organization… “This is where we see the far-right using X,” he explained. “They were able to get a lot of people there very quickly to take control of that situation, direct it.“
Eileen Culloty, deputy director of Dublin City University’s Institute for Media, Democracy, and Society, said that the riots were planned by “a core group” of significant right-wing influencers on X who “have a relatively high profile within that kind of alternative, right-wing world.” Some will be alternative media sites, while others will be right-wing anti-immigration campaigners.”
“They went into overdrive in the lead-up to the riots,” Culloty said. “From lunchtime onwards, they were posting a lot of public messages on Twitter [X], but also on Telegram and other platforms, urging people to act.” Many of the hashtags they used promoted the ethno-nationalist notion that Ireland is full, that Ireland belongs to the Irish.”
A study conducted just days before the riots in Ireland by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent nonprofit think tank that studies and provides policy advice on extremism and disinformation, discovered that Twitter (X) is “used by virtually all of the most prominent actors in the Irish mis- and disinformation ecosystem.”
The study examined the far-right’s growing online impact in Ireland over the last three years, assessing 13,180,820 postings from 1,640 accounts across 12 online platforms. Among the accounts examined by the researchers, X had the most far-right accounts.
Following his takeover of the network in October 2022, tech mogul Musk has destroyed essential components such as its verification system and Trust and Safety advisory board, as well as expanded content control and hate speech enforcement.
According to the Associated Press, experts who study disinformation have said that under Musk, X has deteriorated to the point where it is not only failing to detect and remove misinformation but is favoring posts from accounts that pay for the platform’s blue-check subscription service, regardless of who is running them.
According to Culloty, the core group of far-right accounts suspected of encouraging the violence in Dublin were previously banned from the platform for breaking the firm’s safety regulations but were reinstated following Musk’s purchase of the company.
“They were able to move back to X and a lot of people who had been banned were able to come back,” she added. “It’s notable that fewer people are attempting to conceal their identities [in the aftermath of Musk’s takeover].” As a result, they now feel quite at ease uttering these incendiary claims.”
Following the riots, several prominent people on the right wing of American politics pushed a conspiratorial, anti-immigrant narrative on X in an attempt to justify the violence in Ireland.
Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who now has his program on X, warned his millions of followers last week that “the Irish government is trying to replace the population of Ireland with people from the third world.”
Former White House strategist and Trump friend Steve Bannon, Carlson’s interviewee on the show, called Ireland “a powder keg.”
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Musk addressed the violence in Ireland on X last month, aiming at the Irish government.
Musk wrote in a post the day after the riots in Dublin that Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar “hates the Irish people,” following the Irish government’s announcement that it would seek to adopt new legislation against hate crimes and hate speech in response to the disturbances.
Last Monday, Justice Minister Helen McEntee told the Irish parliament that X had refused to cooperate with requests from the Garda Sochána, Ireland’s national police department, to remove provocative posts in real-time when violence erupted in Dublin.
McEntee told RTÉ that she spoke with a detective “who was actively engaged with the social media companies” throughout the evening of the disturbances.
Other social media platforms, such as TikTok and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, “were responding, engaging with garda, and taking down these vile posts as they appeared,” McEntee said. “They were not. They remained silent. They failed to meet their community standards.”
In response to McEntee’s particular charges, X’s Global Government Affairs Unit wrote a message on the site on Tuesday, calling the comments “inaccurate” and claiming that X has “proactively taken action on more than 1,230 pieces of content under our rules relating to the riots.”
The firm stated that the Irish police “did not make any formal requests to us until late” on November 27, four days after the disturbances, when it “responded promptly” to the appeal dealing with “a single post.”
Elon Musk and X are facing a significant advertising withdrawal, with brands such as Disney, Apple, Coca-Cola, CBS News parent company Paramount Global, and others pulling paid ads from the platform after Musk endorsed an anti-Semitic post on X that claimed Jews incite hatred against White people. Musk dubbed the post’s comments “the actual truth.”
While the controversial entrepreneur has since apologized for his remark, he has chastised businesses who have canceled advertising on X.
Elon Musk addressed the audience at the 2023 DealBook Summit in New York on Wednesday, “If somebody’s going to try to extort me with advertising? Using money to blackmail me? F*** yourself. Go ahead and f— yourself. “Does that make sense?”
According to the New York Times, the drop in advertising might cost X up to $75 million in revenue.
In response to Elon Musk’s remarks, X CEO Linda Yaccarino stated in a post on X last week that Musk’s remarks were a “clear point of view regarding our position” and added, “We’re a platform that empowers people to make their own decisions… And here’s my take on advertising: “X stands at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is strong and ready to welcome you.”
