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‘A polarisation engine’: how social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots – Algorithms that send the most outrageous comments viral and a chain reaction of anger and disinformation made the riots that followed the Southport killings inevitable

  • August 4, 2024



‘A polarisation engine’: how social media has created a ‘perfect storm’ for UK’s far-right riots – Algorithms that send the most outrageous comments viral and a chain reaction of anger and disinformation made the riots that followed the Southport killings inevitable

https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/aug/03/a-polarisation-engine-how-social-media-has-created-a-perfect-storm-for-uks-far-right-riots

by ByGollie

16 comments

  1. This says it best

    The engagement algorithm is the polarising enragement algorithm

  2. So whenever the native population riots there are no “root causes” to identify and address. Somehow it’s just this one particular group that always gets stirred up by the “rhetoric”.

  4. So what to do about it? Europe-wide shutdown? Class-action lawsuits? Martial law? Ban smartphones?

  5. Does anyone notice how hard it is to find any reddit threads on the whole protest topic. Censorship is going hard in the western world.

    Why can’t we discuss this like humans, ignoring the other side of the political spectrum and straight out censoring them will not bring anything good. Ban the radicals but let people speak.

  6. These are anti-immigrant protests, not “FaR-RiGHt”. Ah yes, it’s time for more censorship in social media and the internet in general. You know, to prevent far-right white supremacists from making riots 🤡

  8. I think this is why I still like buying newspapers, even though I’m a reader of The Guardian (UK), when you go up to buy a physical newspaper you can see the landscape of everything else that’s on the front pages from left-wing to right-wing. The internet’s hidden that spectrum of opinion in echo-chambers people can’t/don’t want to get out of.

  9. Why some countries welcoming huge amounts of outlanders while other countries are not?

  10. Russian dis-info and social media can only amplify things that are already there. There have been similiar scenes (burning down asylum seeker houses) in eastern germany in the 90ies, long before social media.

  11. I live on a zone where things happen and I must say that not even the 25% of things that happen appear on any sort of news.

    Stop blaming disinformation and far-right propaganda. Its pure reality

  14. BS. people with marginal income and no outlook to any change for the better, have always “just needed” an excuse to start riots.

  15. Info about the stabber was withheld for a long time and then they finally released photos of him as a young boy in school uniform and raising money for charity rather than what he looked like now.

    In that situation it is easy for people to join the dots, start rumours and, eventually, fuel conspiracy theories.

  16. It’s kind of crazy that they’re protesting migrants and Muslims when the stabber was a native born Christian

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