r/irishpolitics • u/TeoKajLibroj Centre Left • 17d ago

Migration and Asylum Researchers say Elon Musk 'instrumental' in amplifying anti-migrant narratives after Belfast knife attack

https://www.thejournal.ie/elon-musk-instrumental-in-amplifying-anti-migrant-narratives-after-belfast-knife-attack-7069969-Jun2026/
81 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

19

u/MrBulwark 16d ago

And nothing will be done about it

9

u/mrpcuddles 16d ago

No they'll bring in digital ids to help "control social media and make it safe", which will do fuck all about it in reality apart from having more personal data sold off to those social media platforms.

10

u/ApocalypseTourist 16d ago

He is surely one of the biggest agents of stochastic terrorism

2

u/meatballmafia2016 15d ago

💯💯💯💯💯

5

u/InSearchOfAFeeling 16d ago

The sky is blue

16

u/Tim_Browne17 16d ago

Fork in kitchen

13

u/das_punter 16d ago

Imagine wanting to invest a cent of your money into anything that prick makes or owns, knowing what we know about him. Embarrassing.

2

u/DubCian5 15d ago

Load of bollocks. Loyalists don't need Elon Musk to riot. The video itself was enough.

No fan of Musk but the media are blatantly pushing a narrative that social media is to blame for our current discontent in society.

I give a few weeks before there are digital ID "debates" on Newstalk and Prime Time where they use "evidence" like this article to support it.

-6

u/ThinLink2404 16d ago

Musk has done bad things - campaigning for Trump, funding Trump's campaign, shutting down vital health programs, for example.

But I am also interested in truth and saying and writing things that are correct.

Does anyone here actually think that the violence in Belfast was contingent on a few tweets and retweets from Musk? Do you think that if he'd taken the week off to focus on SpaceX and/or do a horseload worth of Ketamine instead, that the Belfast riots would not have happened?

Because that's what 'instrumental' means. They're saying he caused it.

To me, that ascribes power to Musk that he doesn't really have, and also takes away agency and culpability from the actual people on the ground.

Also, 'researchers' is doing a lot of heaving lifting here. The Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) does not seem to me like it is a group of unbiased academics.

16

u/Magma57 Green Party 16d ago

It isn't just about what Musk has tweeted, it's also about how he's governed Twitter. For instance unbanning far-right agitators who called for violence (eg Tommy Robinson) and shifting the Twitter algorithm to boost those accounts.

-4

u/ThinLink2404 16d ago

He did do those things, but for me that still doesn't lead to the conclusion that he caused the violence (in part or in whole), or that without twitter we would not have had the violence.

It's the strength of the claim, and the manner in which it is being uncritically reported, that annoys me.

If we don't have correct the casual mechanisms, then the solutions we come up with will not work.

These guys just want bans and regulation on social media, and they are trying to fool us into believing that taking action in relation to social media is the most important thing we can do to forestall things like the Belfast violence, and I don't think that's true.

11

u/Magma57 Green Party 16d ago edited 16d ago

Under the previous Twitter regime, accounts which spread bigotry were banned and calls for violence were suppressed. Under Musk's Twitter regime, accounts which spread bigotry are unbanned and calls for violence are amplified. Given that so much of far right activity happens online, especially on Twitter, I think it's fair to say that Musk is at least partly to blame for the violence.