The British government has reportedly reached out to fellow leftist-run Anglo-sphere nations Australia and Canada in an attempt to wage a coordinated campaign to potentially ban Elon Musk’s X social media platform.
Earlier this week, UK Prime Minsiter Sir Keir Starmer said that “all options” were on the table, including a potential ban of X in Britain, over users being able to have the platform’s Grok artificial intelligence generate “deepfake” nude images of women and children.
The recently enacted Online Safety Act — passed by the previous “Conservative” government — empowers broadcasting regulator Ofcom to impose fines of up to 10 per cent of a social media firm’s global revenue, and allows for bans in extreme cases.
Yet, apparently reticent to draw the ire of President Donald Trump alone, Downing Street reportedly held talks in recent days with Canberra and Ottawa to craft a joint response to the tech platform, The Telegraph reported.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who is pushing for more censorship rules in his own country following the Islamist mass shooting at Bondi Beach last month, said, “The fact that this tool was used so that people were using its image creation function through Grok is, I think, just completely abhorrent. It, once again, is an example of social media not showing social responsibility. Australians and indeed, global citizens deserve better.”
Toronto MP Evan Solomon, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation in Mark Caney’s government, denied on Sunday that Canada is considering a ban on X.
For his part, Elon Musk, who has long been critical of the increasingly censorious climate in Britain, accused Starmer’s government of acting “fascist” and suggested that they were merely looking for “any excuse for censorship” of X.
Censorship has become increasingly prevalent in Britain. Despite its long tradition of freedom of speech, the country is arresting around 30 people every day for comments made on social media, or over 12,000 per year. Such offences can include the sharing of “grossly offensive” messages or spreading content of “indecent, obscene or menacing character”.
The banning of X would remove a major headache for the struggling Labour government, which has come under consistent pressure personally from Musk, on issues such as freedom of speech, immigration, and the predominantly Pakistani Muslim child rape gangs and the failures of police and government to protect mostly young white working-class girls.
However, such an action taken against one of President Trump’s key allies and a major American business could risk further angering the White House, which has made fighting censorship in Europe a key foreign policy plank.
Indeed, just last month, the Trump administration sanctioned multiple Europeans, including two Britons, for their involvement in the international censorship industry.
This included Imran Ahmed, the head of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an organisation with close ties to Prime Minsiter Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. The administration has sought to deport Ahmed from the United States for his group’s efforts to censor American conservative outlets, including Breitbart News.
While the CCDH has close ties to the Labour government, the White House has yet to sign off on sanctions against any British government official.
This may change if X is banned, however, with Republican Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna vowing to introduce legislation to sanction Prime Minister Starmer and the UK as a whole should the platform be banned in the UK.
“There are always technical bugs during the early phases of new technology, especially AI, and those issues are typically addressed quickly. X treats these matters seriously and acts promptly. Let’s be clear: this is not about technical compliance. This is a political war against Elon Musk and free speech—nothing more,” she said.
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