Within hours of a local 17-year-old boy being arrested for the mass-stabbings in Southport, a seaside town in northwest England, untrue narratives started circulating on social media naming him as “Ali al-Shakati”—a Muslim migrant to the UK—alleging that he was on an MI6 watchlist, and that he was an asylum seeker who was known to the Liverpool mental health services.
None of this was true, but research by Dr Marc Owen Jones, an expert in digital authoritarianism, has traced how this kind of speculation rapidly notched up 27m impressions on social media.
The self-proclaimed misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate, with nearly 10m followers on X, posted a false image of the supposed attacker, claiming he was “straight off a boat”—even though by then the police had told us he had been born in Cardiff 17 years ago. But that, according to Tate, was a lie promoted by what he calls “the Matrix”.
One of the most prominent amplifiers of this untrue information was a shadowy organisation calling itself Channel3 Now. Quite who is behind this outfit is unclear. Investigative journalists soon found that it had started life as a place for Russian car rally videos. It may be now run out of an address in Pakistan or the US. That’s the joy of Musk’s beloved “independent media”—you haven’t got a clue who half of the fabulists are.
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I’ve never had a Facebook account but been questioned by UK police who demanded my non existent Facebook account maybe a dozen times.
Unfortunately I’m now on benifit having lost my job and they keep bring up damn Facebook and trying to make me make an account.
There’s something badly wrong here, don’t use Facebook imo I honestly think it’s some kind of trap at this point.
Some kids once told me that if you’re not on shitbook you don’t exist…maybe they’re cops now.
What’s the context? Are the police the ones trying to get you to make a Facebook account?
I was raided they accused me of wanting to shoot up my workplace, I worked out later someone made a joke when I was on my holiday and a new member took it seriously and phoned the mayor’s office.
I was questioned about my non existant Facebook account in almost every police interwiew I went through which all in all I’d say was close to a dozen.
Whole thing was a nightmare which ruined my entire life at the time, the fact the mayor was involved I think made the police absolutely crazy with trying to get me on anything at all. But yeah Facebook came up way way too often to the point I felt they wanted to arrest me for not having one and I was some type of criminal scum or some psychopath for not having one.
Ultimately they didn’t get me on anything but I kinda feel if I had a Facebook anything I ever posted on it would be twisted in some kind of way to get me.
That’s horrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.
Yeah it sucked at the time, took me quite a while to work out what actually happened.
I actually heard a story where someone made an allegation of racism against somebody, the police logged it but never visited that person or informed them about it. Then that person had a check for a job (I believe working with Children) which involved seeing police records, and it was recorded there. It couldn’t be overturned or be removed because it was in no way a conviction, but it still stopped them from getting a job regardless.
Reposting things like this doesn’t help - people will pick up this as fact. Unless you can prove it, don’t post it.
The story itself isn’t the allegation, the allegation of racism was part of the story. Apologies if my comment didn’t convey that clearly enough
Ah, right. Thanks.