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FT reports:

British officials have faced resistance from X over calls to take down posts that are deemed a threat to national security, as Elon Musk launched a series of jibes on the site about the UK and Sir Keir Starmer.

Though several companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok have been quick to respond by scrutinising and removing flagged posts, X has been less responsive and has kept concerning content up, according to people briefed on its activities.

The billionaire and self-declared “free speech absolutist” has launched a series of incendiary attacks on Starmer’s government over its handling of far-right protests over the past week, stating over the weekend that “civil war is inevitable” following the riots across the country.

Can the UK government do anything other than retort to Musk (which they did), i.e. put any blocks on a foreign platform that roots for civil war in the UK?

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  • N.B. thowards the end of that piece, FT mentions the Online Safety Act 2023, which might allow Ofcom to fine foreign media companies wtih a UK presence. Howerver it says that the Act "will not be fully enforced until next year". OTOH the Wikipedia's summary of Act itself says that it envisages to "preserve access to, journalistic or "democratically important" content such as user comments on political parties and issues." So, I guess it might be subject to some interpretation in cases like this.
    – Make StackExchange GREAT 4ever
    Commented Aug 7 at 12:52
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    The UK might have been in a stronger position as part of the EU as the EU has not been averse to prodding the big digital companies and has the market size clout to make it stick. Oh well. On the other hand: is "rooting for civil war in the UK" fully representative of Musk's current round of ranting?
    – Italian Philosophers 4 Monica
    Commented Aug 7 at 15:35
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    @ItalianPhilosophers4Monica: probably given that he did publicly dig Tommy Robinson's tweets (according to those articles). There are books likewise digging him with titles like "Tommy Robinson and The Coming Civil War" amazon.co.uk/Tommy-Robinson-Coming-Civil-War-ebook/dp/…
    – Make StackExchange GREAT 4ever
    Commented Aug 7 at 19:38
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    Here a former Twitter executive also references the Online Safety Act as a potential remedy.
    – ccprog
    Commented Aug 7 at 20:19
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    The basic principle would be, if your company wants to have customers/ make money in some country, then it has to do so according to the laws of this country. That applies to companies on the internet just as well as to anyone else.
    – quarague
    Commented Aug 8 at 1:26

4 Answers 4

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They could do four things:

  1. Block Twitter/Musk from making money in the UK, or at least make it much harder for them to do so. Ban Tesla cars, ban payments for advertising to X, ban Starlink, etc. The UK controls 3.5% of world GDP so this can sting companies a bit.
  2. Force UK internet providers to block access to Twitter. Parliament is supreme in the UK and there's no First Amendment equivalent, so they could restrict access to speech in any way they wish. Of course VPNs and such still exist so some fraction of Britons will still be able to use Twitter. They already block many websites for copyright reasons, so the technical capacity is already in place.
  3. Issue an arrest warrant against Musk and/or Twitter executives. The US is unlikely to agree to enforce such a warrant but it would cause some headache for the company.
  4. Huff and puff in public but do nothing in practice. This is the default outcome. At the end of the day politicians care more about retaining power than they do about some vague calls for 'civil war'. Bashing Musk is quite popular among many circles so they could keep doing it for years/decades to come without taking any meaningful action. For a very recent example see how Iran is threatening Israel that they're going to retaliate "any day now" for nearly a month :-)
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  • Technically, a VPN can easily block access to Twitter for UK-based users. And technically, the UK government could make it costly for any VPN with paying UK-based customers not to do that.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 18 at 11:28
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    @gnasher729 Let me tell you about bespoke VPNs set up on $5/mo VPCs...
    – alamar
    Commented Aug 18 at 13:32
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    @gnasher729 they’d have to ban all crypto in the UK for starters because dozens of VPNs accept it for payment and would happily tell the UK government to go pound sand. Plus there’s TOR and other free proxy solutions. Internet censorship is pretty hard, you need something like the Chinese Great Firewall to do it effectively.
    – JonathanReez
    Commented Aug 18 at 22:47
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    @JonathanReez That argument is for people who are hellbent on reading Twitter. Normal people would see a message “access to Twitter from the UK has been blocked because..,” and stay away. Same applies to Alamar. 100% censorship is hard. 90% effective isnt. And the 90% hurts Twitters bank account.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 18 at 23:37
  • OTOH interfering with Tesla would likely not be legal. Independent companies.
    – gnasher729
    Commented Aug 18 at 23:44
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They could try arresting top executives at these social media sites. For example, France has just arrested Pavel Durov, one of the founders of Telegram, a messaging platform, for enabling illegal activity on the platform including crimes related to illicit transactions, child sexual abuse, fraud and the refusal to communicate information to authorities.

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This is a complex topic that nobody can give you a full answer to in a Stack Exchange answer.

The Internet is a new enough medium that how to apply national laws to it (an inherently international medium) isn't yet an entirely settled question. National politicians and executive agencies (whether in the UK, the US, Germany, Malaysia, China, or Australia) certainly would all like their laws to apply to all websites because, after all, those websites can be accessed in their countries and could have an impact on public opinion there... yet whether that is a good thing for democracy, freedom of speech, and the Internet as a worldwide communication medium (at least ideally), and to what extent it is practically enforceable, is certainly debatable.

(Quick reminder that the Arab Spring happened to some extent because Arab countries didn't, or weren't able to, really enforce their laws on Western social media.)

Starting points for further research:

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Don't treat him as being significant

Musk wants influence, and hates being ignored. So ignore him, and stop using X-Twitter. Quite a few Labour MPs have done just that.

Of course, he may sue to try to force people to use Twitter (pace his recent lawsuit against an advertising trade association). But if he wants to act the fool, nobody can stop him.

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