IEA Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh has written for City AM criticising calls for greater social media policing as calls have grown for a crackdown amid rioting in the UK.

Matthew wrote:

“Racist and false information was spread on the platform. There were riots on the streets. Musk is a cowboy and X requires far more censorship. The state needs to get involved.

“This is based on an entirely wrong idea about how a free and democratic society does and should operate. It presumes that the primary reason for the riots was violence ‘stirred up’ by right-wing politicians and other malicious figures. It treats people not as individuals, but rather, as empty vessels ready to be manipulated by dark forces.

“In practice, the concepts of disinformation and misinformation are far too nebulous to be useful. This challenge arises when those in positions of authority try to label some information as right and others as wrong. In practice, our understanding changes over time and the focus of censors is inevitably arbitrary. 

“The first answer is that you still do not want state regulators deciding the categories of true and untrue speech. If you are a Labour voter, just think about Ofcom being directed by Tory ministers to treat information about refugees and trans kids as harmful (and vice versa).”

Read Matthew’s full piece here.