Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, has warned that online disinformation campaigns pose an urgent threat to British democracy. She cited examples including Iranian bot farms promoting Scottish nationalism and biased algorithms portraying London as 'an overwhelmingly dangerous' city.
Thornberry said the UK was 'constantly suffering from disinformation campaigns from both state and non-state actors', and that such falsehoods were being amplified by US President Donald Trump and UK politicians. She accused Reform UK of repeating false claims about crime in UK cities, which were then spread via social media platforms.
The committee has written to X, Meta and TikTok, demanding evidence on foreign disinformation targeting the UK. Thornberry stressed the need for 'a proper dialogue with social media companies about the ways their platforms are being used to spread lies from abroad and undermine our democracy'.
Analysis by Dr Mark J Hill of King's College London found that Reddit posts claiming London is 'dangerous' and 'lawless' surged from 874 in 2008 to 258,444 in 2024, with evidence of AI-generated accounts posting solely about crime. Separately, Cyabra reported that 1,300 Iranian bot accounts promoting Scottish independence went dark after internet shutdowns in Iran.
Vijay Rangarajan, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, told the committee that the UK lacks safeguards against algorithmic bias, saying: 'I do not think anything in our current legislative toolkit would enable us to take any action against that.'
