John Swinney has told social media giants they need to crack down on ‘profoundly dangerous’ disinformation as concerns continue to grow that disorder could spread to Scotland.
The Scottish First Minister said Police Scotland was prepared to handle any escalation north of the border after the trouble in England and Northern Ireland over the last week. Riots have taken place across the UK over the past week after three children were fatally stabbed in Southport.
Thousands of anti-racism protestors took to the streets in England last night with no trouble reported after days of fighting among the far right. Disinformation shared on social media has been blamed for a lot of the trouble.
There have been no such events in Scotland so far, but Mr Swinney has said officers are assessing intelligence constantly.
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Now the First Minister has demanded social media companies improve in cracking down on ‘false information’ with Ofcom reminding both Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, of their duties to stop disinformation.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr Swinney said: “I think the social media companies have got a lot of improvement to undertake in their conduct.
“I was very struck by the communication of Ofcom yesterday, reminding social media companies of their obligation to remove material that incites hatred or violence.
“I don’t think that’s been the case.”
Mr Swinney said misinformation had wrongly been spread in relation to a stabbing in Stirling, which he said had been done to “stir up hatred” against the Muslim community.
He told the radio programme: : “The disinformation can be profoundly dangerous. We had an example at the weekend in Scotland where there was information – false information – circulating suggesting a stabbing that had taken place in Stirling had been undertaken by someone from the Muslim community.
“It was information circulated to try to stir up hatred. I was very grateful to Police Scotland for immediately intervening on that material, making it clear that this incident, which is a very serious incident and I feel very much for the victim that was involved, had nothing to do with a person from the Muslim community.
“Police Scotland, in my view, did absolutely the right thing to stamp on that misinformation and we will continue to do that where it’s required.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar also said social media companies were not yet fulfilling their duty to prevent the spread of hatred.
It comes after he joined other Holyrood party leaders at Bute House to be briefed on the situation by Mr Swinney on Wednesday.
Mr Sarwar said: “I think many of our social media platforms aren’t yet taking the scale of action they could take to stop the scale of misinformation on their platforms.
“That needs to happen.”
He also said the UK Government was taking the “right steps” in tackling disorder in England, adding: “I think the tone is very welcome because I think it’s really important to stress that we are not going to tolerate far-right thugs, racists, trying to incite violence or take part in violence in our streets or to intimidate our communities or to target individual places of worship.”
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