Big Tech is stoking unrest in the UK. Why?

https://www.ft.com/content/0f3e33d2-0b9e-481d-a911-245d8cc01a9c

by mmarian • 1 month ago

71 72 1 month ago

4dregress2• 1 month ago

Simple answer is power, look at how things have changed since Musk bought the largest communication platform on the planet. Look at who's backing him and what they want.

The UK's stance goes right against the values and goals these billionaires want and that's basically to do whatever they want without recourse. What better way to sow diversion than to stoke civil unrest and cause change to the systems that stand in their way.

throwyawayyyy2• 1 month ago

I'm sure it's about power. I am also sure that having that much wealth, that little accountability, being surrounded by people who've a vested interest in telling you you're a genius, would make anyone go a little insane. Call it Roman Emperor syndrome. Not many people can be Marcus Aurelius.

dofm• 1 month ago

As much as I abhor his behaviour and think the world does not need stateless trillionaire bullies, the blame for Elon Musk's deteriorating character does not lie with his money or his yes-men.

It was baked in right from the start. We need to understand on a societal level how this happens.

The blame lies with Errol and Maye, who are absolutely fucking awful people (particularly Errol, a man even Elon describes as despicable) who should never have had children, and who are responsible for the early childhood trauma and neglect etc. that turned Elon into a textbook malignant narcissist.

We would pity that man if he were not so destructive, because he is broken in a way that nobody can fix. Part of me does pity him.

And FWIW I do believe that at his best, he fights against this — he is clearly aware of who broke him and how, and I do think that at his best he is trying to build things for people rather than surrender to hating everyone because they cannot give him enough love to fill the hole inside.

At his worst, which is now, he's just a malevolent force — a textbook Bond villain. He will only get worse as he attracts more hatred he cannot unsee.

It's the same for Donald Trump (broken by evil, evil parents) and Andrew Tate (broken by an evil, cruel father at the very least.)

RetroTechie• 1 month ago

Hehe... in ancient Rome, a billionaire-type sociopath would be poisoned, killed on a battlefield, or (as is the fashion these days), fall through a window in a high-rise office building.

NOT proposing that as a fix! But society at large would do well to ask why we let such extreme wealth (and with that: power) concentrate in the hands of so few individuals.

These aren't demi-gods! These are people with all the failings & weaknesses regular folks have. Spread the risk ffs.

spwa42• 1 month ago

The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it. Then the government got Brexit, and then Boris Johnson more than tripled immigration, chasing away EU immigration and getting all the immigrants from the (very coincidentally very low-wage Pakistan, I mean there aren't very many countries anywhere that have lower average wages than Greece)

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/12/30/how-the-take-ba... ( https://archive.ph/krvMU )

Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on. And the central UK government forced small towns, cities and the like into bankruptcy. Now, in the UK, things like social support are financed by municipalities EXCEPT when it comes to immigrants. So, effectively, the government massively increased immigration, reduced social support and raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.

Then the government blamed very large youth services scandals, like the Rotherham scandal, on immigrants. This, despite the fact that these children had been taken from their homes by youth services and were under their custody AND despite the fact that youth services AND the police have been credibly accused of taking payoffs. Those people were definitely not immigrants, but they did not feature in the court proceedings "for some reason".

So government causes, to varying extents, large social problems. It ostensibly saves immigrants from these problems, and then the government itself blames immigrants for problems the government caused.

The problem here is not Twitter. I mean, they're not helping. But they're not the problem.

monooso• 1 month ago

Regardless of whether you're correct, that wasn't the subject of the article.

Jiro• 1 month ago

It's implied by the article that there wouldn't be much opposition to immigration without big tech. That isn't true if there is widespread opposition to immigration anyway and the government broke its promise about dealing with it.

adamauckland• 1 month ago

37% of the voting population voted for Brexit, it wasn't anywhere near a majority.

graemep6• 1 month ago

its a higher percentage than voted for the current government. Its also, obviously, a higher proportion than voted to remain. Its been at least a 100 years since a government was voted in by the majority of the electorate, and only once in that time has a government even got the majority of votes cast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_electio...

fzeroracer• 1 month ago

The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it.
Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on.

These two things might be connected. It's almost like Brexit caused a series of large social problems.

dingdingdang• 1 month ago

Brexit promised a solution just like loads of solutions had been promised within the EU framework prior to it - all these "solutions" were akin in that they were all promised (from left and right within the political establishment) and all not delivered. This is also why people seek to go outside the regular voting pattern with Reform, it's not cause they suddenly love something completely different but because the former voting pattern did not deliver improvements as expected.

dijksterhuis2• 1 month ago

you are right, although i would point out that when you use the word “government” you’re mostly referring to a series of conservative party governments.

at the same time. two things can be true. everything you mentioned plays a large part in why we’re in a bit of a mess as a country.

this is being exacerbated by big tech firms, especially social media ones. the fact that a lie from some tech bro with a large soapbox can travel all the way around the world in less than a second makes it very hard to have a reasoned discussion or debate about the problem.

dredmorbius3• 1 month ago

"The government" in British politics (as with most parliamentary systems) is a term of art which in a policy context refers specifically to present executive authority as embodied in the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet.

"The government" at the time, embodied by David Cameron, were not pushing for Brexit. It, and Cameron, pushed for a vote, but with the expectation that the referendum would be defeated.

graemep6• 1 month ago

Which government pushed for Brexit? The government at the time of Brexit campaigned to remain.

People voted for Brexit for a lot of reasons. The leaders of both Vote Leave and Leave.EU said they wanted more skilled immigration.

raised taxes on everybody except immigrants.

immigrants pay the same taxes as everyone else plus extra taxes such as the NHS surcharge and huge visa renewal fees.

dredmorbius3• 1 month ago

Right. "The government" didn't push for Brexit. Then-prime minister David Cameron pushed for a Brexit vote largely because he thought that the measure would be defeated. Quoting Wikipedia, "Supporters of the Remain campaign included then-prime minister David Cameron, the future prime ministers Theresa May, Liz Truss, and Sir Keir Starmer, and the ex–prime ministers John Major, Tony Blair, and Gordon Brown" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit>.

Retrospective analyses and Cameron's own account make clear that he saw advantage in calling for the referrendum with the expectation that it would be defeated. Example:

Cameron chose to commit to a vote, not because the country’s population was clamouring for one but because a significant minority of his own MPs ... were demanding that he do so...

Naturally, Cameron was aware he was running a risk – after all, his best friend in politics, Chancellor George Osborne, told him so again and again. But he thought he would win the vote....

<https://ukandeu.ac.uk/why-david-cameron-called-the-2016-refe...>

danny_codes• 1 month ago

Billionaires can't have the UK passing sensible taxation policies to curtail the influence of the super-rich. If the UK achieves success in preventing the collapse of their society into a form of feudal poverty, Americans might catch on that there are other options. The Musk-types enjoy playing god and would rather risk systemic collapse than shed some part of their power.

eyevz• 1 month ago

[flagged]

isodev• 1 month ago

You mean the made up idea of immigration as a problem? Sure.

What Brits probably want more is to rejoin the EU, get back some leverage on the world scene and dig themselves our of the brexit hole

1dom2• 1 month ago

I don't think it's a made up idea that immigration is a problem, some people clearly, definitely consider it a problem, and it can cause problems. But it's a problem that's been heavily worked on recently and has had a lot of success in solving in the UK over the past 2 years.

This is why it's completely barmy to suggest the average brit is fed up of immigration now, and I'm not sure why many people pointing that out are being heavily downvoted.

throwyawayyyy2• 1 month ago

There's being fed up with something and there's fomenting civil war. The huge wave of immigration, which has since subsided, happened under the Tories.

croon• 1 month ago

Who/what is the "establishment"?

SpicyLemonZest4• 1 month ago

That seems like an inadequate explanation of why Elon Musk, who is not a Brit, is investing so much time and energy into this issue.

TrackerFF2• 1 month ago

It is easier when that is the zeitgeist. If every other country in Europe has the same thing going on, it becomes easier to campaign on that sort of stuff. Suddenly the extreme parties don't seem that extreme, and people start to question whether or not previously extreme opinions are that extreme anymore.

1dom2• 1 month ago

As a brit, I can confirm I am not at all fed up with immigration.

Your comment is unnecessary, unsubstantiated, doesn't add anything to the discussion and is just going to cause arguments in its current form.

10xDev5• 1 month ago

Immigration has dramatically gone down in the past few years.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo... (figure 2)

I think the real problem people are having is that a large amount of those immigrants are now no longer from the EU. But you have Brexit to blame for that.

graemep6• 1 month ago

If people prefer unskilled EU immigration to skilled non-EU immigration its says something about them.

People had a problem with EU immigration before Brexit so I do not think that is it.

I think most of the problem people have is with is to illegal immigration. The sentiment is "stop the boats". There are bizarre things happening in the asylum system. Do we need to consider claims made by people from the EU or the US? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/18/eu-citizens-hand... That is an extreme but there are lots of claims by people from safe countries.

sefrost4• 1 month ago

A) people had an issue with immigration when it was mostly from the EU as well, one of the main drivers of Brexit

B) leaving the EU did not mean that non-EU migration had to go up

C) immigration going down for one or two years doesn’t change the fact that millions of people are in the UK that most British people didn’t want to enter in the first place over a period of 15+ years

D) net immigration going down still means lots of people are entering the UK from elsewhere, while people from the same culture (ie grew up in the UK) are leaving which still changes the culture of the country

Note: I’m not saying I personally agree with any of those points but it’s clear what the issues are if you’re prepared to listen. There is opinion polling on all of this.

jeffbee• 1 month ago

Imagine the irony of Northern Ireland getting mad over immigration.

graemep6• 1 month ago

Another way of looking at it is that they have been mad over it for centuries.

kjkjadksj4• 1 month ago

If they are fed up with immigration they are stupid. “Gee we have declining birth rates and we want to deny this pool of labor that might correct course because they are brown.” The american empire was built on easy immigration. Turns out the tired and poor that we took in can build empires and win europe’s major wars for them.

10xDev5• 1 month ago

The job market has imploded and the economy hasn't been growing since 2008. There definitely needs to be a cap.

whatevaa• 1 month ago

Immigration is a duct tape solution to fixing things at this point. It is not going to build you an empire today.

cyanydeez• 1 month ago

well, first, you need to filter out the foreign influence before you tell people "Brits" and then you also need to adjust your history of brits importing immigrants from their colonies.

After you do that, then people might listen to you.

archagon3• 1 month ago

That’s on you to prove. Is this an “obvious” truth? Or is it just the narrative spun by the fascists and fear-mongers who, incidentally, own some of the biggest media platforms in existence?

Today, a man stabbed four people in islamophobic rage: a ghastly crime. Where are the riots in protest of racist UK natives?

How many Brits do you know?

TrackerFF2• 1 month ago

Same reason as always: Wealthy people want less taxes, more power, and will lobby for the parties that always promise less taxes: Those on the right.

The problem is that the conservative and traditional right aren't too popular, so they need to go for the far-right. Those parties are in full MAGA-mode, focusing on things like immigration. It is so, so much easier to sway public opinion by blowing up incidents involving immigrants, than to convince the public that they should accept reduction or degradation of services due to tax cuts.

Far-right politicians discovered some time ago that they can straight up lie through their teeth, and face zero consequences. And those lies will propagate through social media, and people will accept them as facts.

It seems like critical thinking among huge parts of the population is considerably down. I've heard seemingly smart people I know regurgitate lies they've picked up on social media, which they could have fact checked in 30 seconds.

twoWhlsGud• 1 month ago

"Everything means less than zero" (E. Costello)

Social media seems to basically be a way of running A/B testing on the population until you find enough folks vulnerable to some sort of powerful misconception that serves your purpose.

For the SM network "purpose" means engagement, but it turns out that (to our disadvantage) it also serves the purposes of an army of grifters, opportunists and power mad sociopaths who are taking over the world. Once again (think the 1930s) it turns out mastery of new media technologies in the hands of bad people has consequences.

As techies, building productive rather than destructive media (and AI is the next "media" of consequence) really ought to be top of agenda.

classified• 1 month ago

As techies, building productive rather than destructive…

That's just not mercenary enough. Techies will build the stuff they're getting paid to build. And the bad guys pay more.

rob_c• 1 month ago

Yeah that article is missing a very major point that immigration in the UK hasn't meant assimilation or a coherent mixing of cultures as people want or may have observed at times.

The problems in the UK are actually focused around sticky blobbyness caused by a) lack of integration, b) left vs right flavor of the moment causing further segregation and c) long term socioeconomic factors leading to govt(councils) fixing the problem in the cheapest way possible which is unfortunately high profile in the British high street by the public.

A lot of British are moving out of the city centers themselves (or already have) and into suburbs which leaves the cities hollowed out. Lack of footfall means lack of investment means decay and cheap housing/buildings.

All of this is a predicable recipe for friction but very short term British politics combined with a "not my problem" attitude prevalent in the nhs and public sectors means people doubled down in short term solutions for over a generation.

That combined with more hardship causes people to look at the biggest broken problem which is our immigration system needed reforming over 20yr+ ago and unfortunately this was locked into place by EU laws and policy (such ironically we pushed for, for other political reasons).

It's less of a grand conspiracy and more of the dominoes we're set to fall this way after dragging us out of the 80s without fixing anything and then the post recession being used to fuel boom and growth vs fixing underlying issues at a national level.

kjkjadksj4• 1 month ago

British people miss the fact that assimilation happens in the generation after the immigrant generation. Italian immigrants were looked down on in the US too. Too catholic, not speaking the language and not engaging in american culture practices. The next generation speaks fluent english and is scarcely different than any other american out of the school system.

_DeadFred_• 1 month ago

I wonder if we (the countries experiencing mass immigration numbers) are also missing that between 1908 and 1923 35% to 40% of all immigrants who arrived in the U.S. eventually returned to their home countries. I wonder if those were people who were unable to assimilate and if those numbers are true today or if with access to media from home, etc, it no longer occurs as much and the dynamics today are incomparable to historical immigration/assimilation patterns.

graemep6• 1 month ago

Most immigrants in UK do assimilate. Seen the stories about the high proportion of births where at least one parent is foreign born? In most cases the other parent is British born.

SpicyLemonZest4• 1 month ago

I agree with most of what the article has to say, but I feel like it's dancing around the fundamental issue. Like:

These apparently disparate events all feature one obvious commonality: race. In each case, the riots were sparked by an act of violence in which the victim(s) were white and the attackers were not. The context: these events were focused largely in ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhoods, communities where resources are stretched.

I know the author is smart and informed enough to see the parallels between this and a number of high-profile incidents in the past decade. There's an increasingly widespread idea that this is simply how a wise person should see interracial crime, not as a series of tragic individual incidents but as attacks on the whole of Group X by the whole of Group Y. The idea has achieved enough prominence that it's starting to overcome the hard-fought taboo on white identitarianism, and now for the first time in decades we have to deal with it as an open political force.

I emphasize that white identitarianism is a bad ideology, incompatible with many of the nice things we enjoy about the modern world, and we have to defeat rather than accommodate it. But defeating it requires taking a serious look at the factors that allow it to grow.

archagon3• 1 month ago

It could well be the case that the growth of white identitarianism is almost entirely driven by white supremacist media moguls, who are unfathomably rich and shape the zeitgeist to a large degree.

See also: antisemitism in Nazi Germany. I’m sure some Jewish people committed serious crimes against non-Jewish Germans. But that was incidental, not causal, to the vile propaganda that eventually led to the Holocaust.

SpicyLemonZest4• 1 month ago

It could be, but I really don't think so. The splintering of Reform UK and then Restore Britain strongly suggests to me that there's a mass movement. If it were a plot by media moguls, I would have expected them to carefully manage discontent to keep people within the Tories.

1vuio0pswjnm73• 1 month ago

It appears archive.today has removed the Javascript and CAPTCHA requirements as well as the DDoS against the blog

Your IP address and any optional headers you send, e.g., user-agent, will be returned in an HTML comment at the top of the response body

1vuio0pswjnm73• 1 month ago

Now a user-agent is required again. LOL

1vuio0pswjnm73• 1 month ago

Text-only from WARC:

    curl https://ghostarchive.org/chimurai4/4KevH.warc \
    |grep -o articleBody\":\".*\",\"wordCount \
    |sed 's/articleBody\":\"//;s/.\{42\}follow FT Weekend on Instagram.*\",\"wordCount//;s/\\n/@/g' \
    |tr @ '\n' \
    |fmt

tim333• 1 month ago

"Big Tech" seems to basically be Elon Musk, known for nazi salutes and nazi grandparents who moved out of South Africa because it wasn't racist enough.

Big Tech is stoking unrest in the UK. Why?

Related Stories