Something happened when Elon Musk took over Twitter and renamed it X.

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His supporters would have you believe it was a prioritising of ‘freedom of speech’. He reinstated previously banned accounts like those of anti-Muslim activist Tommy Robinson and alt-right commentator Katie Hopkins. He called X a ‘global marketplace of ideas’ where everyone, regardless of how extreme their views are considered, should be able to have their say.

As a subsequent investigation by Sky News (with oversight from numerous respected academics at Stanford University, the Oxford Internet Institute and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate) revealed, however, there was something altogether more sinister going on. X’s algorithm had, it appeared, been tweaked to boost far-right viewpoints. Regardless of a user’s political loyalties or the content they actively seek out, far-right content will disproportionately appear in their feeds. Since engagement can be monetised, this incentivises X users to post extreme views on topics like immigration and LGBTQ rights. Analysis by PoliticsHome found that Rupert Lowe, leader of the hard-right party ‘Restore Britain’, is making tens of thousands of pounds a year from the traction his posts on X receive.

Simultaneously, what had once been Twitter’s verification system, a ‘blue tick’ which indicated that an account genuinely belonged to the person or organisation it claimed to be, was replaced by a subscription scheme. Those willing to pay a monthly fee to X became the new blue-ticked users and saw their replies to posts prioritised. An estimated fifth of users, including myself, chose to deactivate their accounts as the platform dispensed with its fact checkers whilst allowing promotion of racist conspiracy theories and sexually explicit content. The net result has been, in the words of one caller to my LBC show, that X has become a ‘cesspit of hate speech and porn’.

Until recently, Nigel Farage seemed supremely unconcerned by all of this. When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, Farage called it ‘the best news for free speech in years’. When the government threatened to ban X earlier this year after it emerged that its AI tool, Grok, was being used to create abuse images of women and children, Farage called it an ‘appalling’ attack on free speech. Musk is, of course, a close ally of the man Farage said he was ‘proud to call a friend’ and ‘the bravest person he has ever met’, Donald Trump.

Indeed, Trump arguably wouldn’t have won the US election with X and certainly wouldn’t have without an extensive network of far-right online content creators. Populist politicians and social media have long had a symbiotic relationship. They each rely on conspiracy and unchecked hate speech, the former because it brainwashes large portions of the population into voting for them and the latter because it generates profit in the attention economy.

But now, it seems, the leopard has begun to eat Farage’s face. Speaking at a press conference this week, Farage said X has become a very ‘unpleasant’ and ‘dangerous’ place. He highlighted the abuse endured on the platform by Reform’s ethnic minority candidates, going on to make the extraordinary claim that ‘if this was happening to any other candidates from more established parties … You would all be in total uproar’. Never mind that MPs and counsellors of all stripes have been speaking out for years about issues of racial abuse on X (in fact, MP for Brent Dawn Butler posts a weekly ‘block list’ comprising screenshots from numerous X accounts calling her the N word, comparing her to an ape and telling her to ‘go back to Africa’).

Farage is not a politician known for ideological consistency. No doubt if he’d have been asked about Butler’s block list a year ago, he’d have said he considered it a price worth paying for ‘free speech’. Now, times have changed. The chronically online conspiratorial right wing are turning against Farage's buddy Trump. Some of MAGA’s most influential thought-leaders are promoting the ideas that Israel is dictating US military decision-making and that Trump’s pre-election assassination attempt was faked.

There can be little doubt that this is having a knock-on impact on Reform. Their supporters have relied on importing culture war talking points from the United States for more than a decade now and the perception is that Farage spends more time flying over to Mar-a-Lago to engage in acts of sycophancy than he does in his own constituency in Clacton.

In short, an online machine powered by hatred and lies, which once benefited Farage’s political aspirations, no longer does. Choosing to call it out now is the height of hypocrisy.

Listen to LBC's Natasha Devon on Saturdays from 6-9pm on the new LBC app.

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