Politics Home | X Accused Of Failing To Remove Racist Abuse Despite New Ofcom Commitments

There is an ongoing investigation by Ofcom into the GrokAI chatbot on X (Alamy)

5 min read20 May

On Friday, Ofcom announced that X – formerly known as Twitter – had agreed to strengthen its moderation of illegal hate and terrorist content under the Online Safety Act. 

In a voluntary agreement, X promised to review and assess suspected illegal terrorist and hate content flagged through its dedicated UK illegal content reporting tool within an average of 24 hours of being reported, calculated over a three-month period. The platform also said it would review and assess at least 85 per cent of UK suspected illegal terrorist and hate content reported through the tool within a maximum of 48 hours.

Ofcom said it will monitor X’s performance “closely”, with the platform expected to submit performance data to Ofcom every quarter over a year.

However, the independent think tank and charity British Future said the platform had failed to moderate racist hate posts reported by the organisation on the platform since Friday.

The charity’s British South Asian Bridgers project reported 33 posts on Friday that used the racist slur ‘p**i’ as direct racially aggravated abuse to ethnic minorities in British public life – a prosecutable offence under UK hate crime laws and legal obligations under the Online Safety Act.

By Monday, all 33 of the reported posts were still visible on X despite the platform’s 48-hour moderation window having expired, with no indication that enforcement action had been taken. British Future told PoliticsHome that, within the sample it tested, the platform had so far recorded a “zero per cent success rate” in removing the reported racist content.

Among the examples highlighted was a post directed at Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood reading: “No one wants you scabby p**i c**ts, why are you surprised, rapey cockroaches”.

Other targets included former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf, independent MP Zarah Sultana, Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf, former Tory chancellor Sajid Javid, Greater Manchester Mayor Sadiq Khan, and journalist Sangita Myska.

The charity said 28 of the reports generated automated acknowledgements from X within around a minute, while five received no acknowledgement at all. It has shared its findings with Ofcom, ministers and MPs, and is urging the regulator Ofcom to intervene directly with the platform.

It reported a further two posts using the slur ‘n****r’ against Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and Justice Secretary David Lammy on Sunday, both of which were also not taken down within 48 hours.

Labour MP and chair of the Women and Equalities Select Committee Sarah Owen told PoliticsHome that she wants the government and Ofcom to consider stronger sanctions against Musk’s platform in the UK.

“Ofcom has to get a grip of the dangerous and growing threat that online hate speech is posing to our democracy and our communities,” she said.

“We know that since Elon Musk took over Twitter and gutted the moderation teams, it has become a breeding ground for far-right messaging and incitement of hate and violence against ethnic and religious minorities. Musk himself has shamefully targeted our democracy and endorsed an ethnonationalist MP who wants to deport British citizens on the basis of their race. 

“The government must consider stronger action against X. At the very least, this must include prioritising other platforms for government communications. If we don’t get this right, we send a message to foreign-owned tech giants that they can ignore our laws at will. If X do not rapidly comply with our laws, Ofcom must implement further sanctions.”

The voluntary commitments by X followed an investigation by Ofcom into whether the platform was doing enough to identify and remove illegal terror and hate content, after PoliticsHome revealed in November that a cross-party group of MPs and peers was calling for action against a surge in antisemitic posts and calls for violence against Jews on X. Ofcom said the commitments from X came after “intensive engagement” with the platform.

There is still an ongoing investigation by Ofcom into X under the Online Safety Act, after reports in January that the platform’s Grok AI chatbot account was being used to create and share sexualised images of adults and children.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We condemn racism in all its forms. Some of the online abuse people experience is illegal under UK law, such as some types of threatening or abusive behaviour and harassment targeting ethnic minorities.

“Under the Online Safety Act, social media companies must take appropriate steps to prevent their UK users from encountering illegal content. If a post is reported to a platform, it must decide whether the content breaks UK laws, and it can use our guidance when making these decisions.

“Ofcom’s job is to make sure sites and apps have appropriate measures in place to comply with their duties, rather than tell platforms which specific posts or accounts to take down.

“These commitments are a step forward, but there’s a lot more to do. We’ll be carrying out quarterly reviews of X’s performance, and we’ve shown we’ll take action if evidence suggests companies are not meeting their legal duties under the Act.”

Avaes Mohammad, Manager of the British South Asian Bridgers project at British Future, told PoliticsHome: “Many people will be shocked by the scale and intensity of racist abuse on X towards just about every Asian public figure, whatever subject they are talking about. This makes for a deeply unequal experience of public space with a chilling effect.

“Decades of hard work ensured that the p-word slur had become socially unacceptable in our society. But the failure to enforce the law online is now playing a significant role in a rising climate of racism.

“The platform’s new commitments to remove criminal content could make a real difference – if they are honoured. What is already clear is that this will only happen if there is real-time monitoring and scrutiny to ensure that X removes hateful content and keeps the perpetrators off the platform – rather than allowing them to carry on abusing people with impunity.”

The charity also raised concerns that X may be acting too narrowly, even when it does remove individual posts, by failing to suspend the accounts responsible.

PoliticsHome has contacted X for comment.