Elon Musk’s role was ‘instrumental’ in the Belfast riots, researchers say

Submission statement: Data collected by a social media watchdog in the UK shows that Elon Musk directly and massively amplified calls to violence through his platform X during the race riots in Belfast, prompting further questions about social media regulations and the outsized influence of the world's first trillionaire in boosting far-right hatred across the world.

Riots broke out across Northern Ireland on June 9, after a Sudanese asylum seeker attempted to behead a passerby in Belfast, grievously injuring him. The shocking video of the attack widely circulated online, and served as a call for "retribution" by white nationalists, who targeted immigrants and minorities in Northern Ireland during what was described as "modern-day pogroms" by The Times.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British-American NGO who monitors hate speech online and advocates for strict social media regulations, notes that calls to violence were directly amplified by X's owner Elon Musk, both through his posts and by boosting the profiles of anti-immigration hooligan Tommy Robinson, and Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, for a cumulative 115 million views, 55% of them from Musk's posts alone.

Imran Ahmed, CCDH's CEO, who was targeted by US sanctions in December 2025 for his calls to regulate US platforms, noted that "Musk [had] unparalleled power to shape what people see online", and that "no individual played a bigger role in spreading this content on X than Musk himself", with direct, willing involvement in amplifying calls to violence against immigrants and minorities, as well as his platforming of Rupert Lowe or Tommy Robinson (unbanned from Twitter/X by Musk in 2022).

The world's first trillionaire's reach online had already been pointed out by European researchers and politicians after previous incidents involving X's lack of moderation and promotion of certain contents, as in the 2024 UK riots, or the boosting of AfD during the 2025 German elections.