Prime Minister Keir Starmer issued a fresh warning about the dangers of online radicalization, as he pointed out that the teenager who carried out July’s deadly Southport attack, Axel Rudakubana, watched violent online content before killing three young girls in a knife attack last summer.
“The responsibility for this barbaric act lies, as it always does, with the vile individual who carried it out,” Starmer said on Tuesday, one day after the 18-year-old pleaded guilty to his crimes.
An inquiry launched by the home secretary will examine the state failings that precipitated the horrific attack, including why the Prevent program, to which Rudakubana was referred three times and which is aimed at stopping radicalization, didn’t fully appreciate the risks he posed.
However, Starmer also singled out the availability of violent online content in inspiring lone killers. “There are also bigger questions, questions such as how we protect our children from the tidal wave of violence freely available online,” he said.
“Because you can’t tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms, but with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video — videos that, in some cases, are never taken down. That cannot be right.”
He linked this phenomenon to the rise of a new kind of terrorist threat posed by “loners, misfits” and “young men in their bedroom,” echoing recent warnings by the U.K.’s top intelligence chief.
“Terrorism has changed,” Starmer said. “In the past, the predominant threat was highly organized groups with clear political intelligence groups like Al Qaeda.”
“That threat, of course, remains, but now alongside that, we also see acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.”
The Southport attack, as well as subsequent riots that spread across Britain over the summer, have drawn fresh scrutiny of social media platforms and how they police, and promote, content.
In the wake of the violence, the U.K.’s internet regulator Ofcom has said it will consult on additional rules under the Online Safety Act in the spring, including a new measure that would force platforms to strengthen their crisis response protocols.
Laws which come into effect in March will already require platforms operating in the U.K. to remove illegal content, including terrorism or abuse-related content, or face penalties.
On Tuesday, MPs on parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology Committee began an inquiry into the role played by social media algorithms in promoting disinformation and harmful content, with a focus on the events in Southport.
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