Adverts promoting the Olympics, the British Medical Association (BMA), pharmaceutical giant Glaxo Smith Klein (GSK) and more appeared beside high profile far right X posts spreading hateful misinformation about the Southport stabbings.
The new research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate looked at five accounts, including that of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, former GB news presenters Laurence Fox and Calvin Robinson, Britain First co-leaders Paul Golding and Ashlea Simon.
Enough of this madness now.
We need to permanently remove Islam from Great Britain.
Completely and entirely. https://t.co/YpPood4uud
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) July 29, 2024
The posts include posts with hateful far right statements including “Islam is evil and needs removing from the UK” from Paul Golding, “We all know who’s responsible for the Southport attack. White Christian teens don’t stab children, Islamists do” from Ashlea Simon and “Islam is evil and needs removing from the UK,” from Calvin Robinson.
I have only seen a couple of your tweets so far and have seen consistently bad takes.
Take a break.
Islam is evil and needs removing from the UK. That is an evergreen truth, not random.
— Fr Calvin Robinson (@calvinrobinson) August 2, 2024
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In total the research estimated that the five accounts generated around 38.9 million ad impressions in the week after the Stockport account.
It comes amid widespread concern around brand safety on the platform and comes in the wake of Musk’s decision to sue boycotting advertisers.
Since taking over the platform, then known as Twitter, Elon Musk has reportedly restored nearly 12,000 banned accounts as part of a general amnesty.
CEO and founder of the Center for Countering Digital Hate Imran Ahmed said: “Elon Musk’s X played a significant role in these riots, with algorithms turbocharging the spread of lies spread by bad actors he let back onto the platform, after the previous owners banned them for spreading hate and lies.”
“The truth is that Musk’s platform is willing to profit from hate and lies because it’s desperate for cash, losing hundreds of millions of dollars last year as it struggles to keep up with debt repayments.”
“It will carry on pumping out hate and lies for profit until regulators step in, hold them responsible and make it more expensive to harm our societies in this way.”