Elon Musk’s X refused to give users’ details to police after Southport riots

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/07/elon-musk-refused-give-x-details-police-southport-riots/

Posted by TheTelegraph

23 comments

  1. ***[EXCLUSIVE] The Telegraph reports***:

    Elon Musk’s X refused to hand over hundreds of account details to British authorities during and after last summer’s riots, as the US billionaire attacked the Government for imprisoning people for social media posts.

    Figures published by X, formerly known as Twitter, showed that the company refused over half of UK government information requests in the second half of 2024.

    It handed over information in 379 out of 806 cases, a 47pc disclosure rate. The rate is significantly lower than those of Google, Meta, TikTok and LinkedIn.

    The figures cover requests from police and other law enforcement agencies, and can include data such as people’s email, internet addresses and an account’s private messages.

    The data covered July and August’s riots, when dozens of people were arrested for social media posts and some received prison sentences.

    During the summer, Mr Musk compared Britain to the Soviet Union and accused the newly elected Labour Government of “censorship”.

    In January, he wrote: “At this rate, the UK Government will pretty soon be executing people for liking a meme!”

    Police routinely ask social media companies to hand over information to assist in law enforcement investigations, often to help identify anonymous accounts or see who they might be communicating with.

    Legal teams at the companies assess the requests, and can reject them if they are seen as overly broad or legally dubious. A small number are made as emergency requests, where police consider there is an imminent threat.

    X’s legal website says it “may seek to narrow requests that are overly broad, request additional context if the nature of the investigation is not clear, or push back on the request for other reasons”.

    The company recorded a spike in requests from the UK during the second half of 2024. The number of requests rose to 806 from 635 in the first half of the year.

    The 47pc of requests X complied with was similar to its compliance rate in the EU, but significantly lower than the US, where it disclosed information in 78.5pc of cases.

    It was also significantly lower than other tech companies. Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, released data in 84pc of cases in the UK during the first half of 2024. Google released data in 88pc of requests during the same period.

    TikTok released data in 62pc of cases and LinkedIn 61pc. The companies have not yet released data for the second half of 2024, when a series of violent riots erupted across the UK after the killing of three girls in Southport by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana.

    **Full story:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/07/elon-musk-refused-give-x-details-police-southport-riots/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/07/elon-musk-refused-give-x-details-police-southport-riots/)

  2. The only reason to go after these people for their social media posts, is to stop people saying the truth before every body starts doing it.

  6. Hopefully more people stand up to our totalitarian government

  8. Ok, ban twitter in the UK then. It’s become a pit of right wing extremists.

  9. Good. Keep getting told, that our Police don’t use social media to arrest people. Yet we keep seeing it happen. Then the goalposts, of why and what people say, keep changing when convenient.

  12. and why should it? American company, American data, American laws. The bigger question should be why our government feels entitled to data on protesters.

  13. So the report is stating that the police are making lots of spurious requests which are getting rightly rejected. Its the digital equivalent of ransacking someone’s house to try and find something, anything to charge people with, yet we don’t worry about the creeping police state here and say X is evil… geez ok guys

  14. So long as he complies with actual warrants, then fine. There are reasons the police might need this information but those need to be significant

  15. If you use your platform to criticise the Govt and allow disinformation then you need to cooperate in cleaning up and helping the Police do their job. Would Elon refuse the FBI? I don’t think so…he considers Britain a vassal of US power

  16. Taking part In a riot is free speech according musk.

    But attend a protest agent the invasion of gaze and there handing over info to every agency under the sun.

    Fucking hypocrisy!

  17. Good.

    At least someone has integrity and won’t sell you out.

    No doubt Reddit will spin this as “Elon bad”

  19. “Social media company complied with less than half authorities’ requests for information“

    Doesn’t look like a blanket refusal. Looks like they cooperated with what they say as reasonable and no more

  20. Incitement (legitimate) has been a crime for hundreds of years. The issue I hold is with the heavy handedness of stuff that is obviously not.

  22. Without a police warrant obtained by a judge they shouldn’t even be asking. And no company should comply.

  23. Arresting people for hurty words, historically this has ‘never’ resulted in the rise of dictators and human rights suppression.

Comments are closed.