Tech companies have been urged by the UK Home Secretary to remove violent content from their social media sites, in order to prevent further attacks. In her letter to Meta, YouTube, Google, X and TikTok, Yvette Cooper stated that the level of accessibility to violent content was “unacceptable”. Axel Rudakubana was recently given a 52-year sentence for the murder of three young girls and the attempted murder of eight children and two adults in a dance class. This followed the discovery of a downloaded Al-Qaeda training manual, leading the police to conclude he had used methods from the document to perpetrate the attack.
Cooper, along with Technology Secretary Peter Kyle, emphasised in their letter that these social media firms “had a moral responsibility to act”. She noted that the material that Rudakubana was able to access and use to plan his attack was illegal and that he should not have been able to download it. The letter called for swift removal of the violent content, which included footage of a knife attack on bishop Mari Emmanuel from Australia.
The Southport attack exposed the danger of failing to act upon violent content, according to the letter. The Online Safety Act, which was passed recently in the UK, will mean that social media companies will be required to take “proportional measures” to protect users from illegal content starting from March this year. Cooper is calling for these “measures” to be taken now, given the firms’ moral responsibility to public safety.
Following the attack, Rudakubana was referred to the Prevent programme three times between 2019 and 2021. He also had a previous conviction for a violent offence against a child, and admitted to carrying a knife on more than ten occasions. The government has announced an inquiry into opportunities to prevent the attack and why they were missed. The Home Office review, according to the Times, has found that there were “serious failings” in the counter-terrorism officers’ handling of Rudakubana’s case
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