Comment: Social media firms must be held accountable for platforming hate

The disgraceful scenes we witnessed in England and Northern Ireland over the weekend of people attacking police and targeting hotels housing asylum seekers were truly disturbing.

“Far-right thuggery” was how UK Prime Minster, Keir Starmer bluntly labelled the days of destruction and violent disorder in towns such as Rotherham, Tamworth and Middlesbrough, while Belfast also saw some equally lawless behaviour with plastic bullets fired during disturbances.

PSNI officers came under sustained attack while a victim of a suspected hate crime is in a serious condition in hospital after the violence on Monday night.

Starmer was unequivocal in his condemnation of the weekend violence and told those who took part, directly or indirectly, that their day of reckoning would come.

That process is already underway online as images and clips of some of those involved and captured on cameras are circulating widely, with names attached in many cases. Now, reality will hit home. Doors will be knocked, jobs will be gone, liberty will be lost, real-life consequences suffered. And good enough for them.

Will they now stand proudly in a court dock and claim they were 'taking their country back' and 'defending their communities against the invaders' or will most sob for forgiveness, plead mitigating circumstances and offer the excuse they were 'only there out of curiosity'? Let's see how that works out for them.

Remember too, that the 'spark' for six days of violent flashpoints was the horrific deaths of three little girls in Southport in Merseyside and the injuring of nine other children and adults.

Within minutes of that horror attack on 29th July, social media was ablaze with speculation that the attacker, a teenager, was 'a migrant' an 'asylum seeker, 'a terrorist Muslim'.

Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old British citizen born in Cardiff to Rwandan parents, was arrested at the scene, and has been charged with three counts of murder, 10 counts of attempted murder, and possession of a bladed article.

Those facts mattered little to the mob, the die had been cast and the social media blitzkrieg demanding to 'get them out' continued unabated, kickstarting the first of the 'concerned communities' clashes with police in Southport.

Few, if any, of those participating in the looting of high street bakeries and phone shops would be able to recall the names of six-year-old Bebe King, of seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe, or nine-year-old Alice Dasilva Aguiar, three little angels whose lives were snuffed out in a mindless, horrific attack.

It doesn't matter because it was never about those poor children. It was just an excuse for the far-right to mobilise and give their hate an outlet.

We have seen these disturbing scenes now on both sides of the Irish Sea. Police attacked, premises burned, asylum seekers targeted. It has to stop.

This is not about protest, this is, as Starmer calls it correctly, far-right thuggery.

In demanding the full force of the law rain down on those involved and those pulling the strings, he should also include the social media platforms that amplify and stoke the hate.

At the beginning of July, campaign group, Global Witness detected dozens of bot-like accounts that amplified conspiracy theories and the use of hashtags such as #IrelandbelongstotheIrish and other xenophobic sentiments.

Global Witness said that numerous accounts lit up with posts attacking immigration following protests against the use of a former paint factory in Coolock for accommodating asylum seekers.

None of these bot accounts originated in Ireland but they garnered hundreds of thousands of impressions here.

Social media platforms seem to operate with impunity, allowing their platforms be used freely for far-right thugs to organise, spread hate and misinformation and create an environment of fear and terror that can be overwhelming.

Only today it has emerged that Gardaí are investigating a threat made against the Taoiseach and his family over the weekend.

The threat, which was posted on Instagram, refers to a weapon and threatens violence against Simon Harris and his wife and children.

The threat remained online for at least two days after the gardaí had asked the social media company to remove it.

These companies must be called to account as quickly as those setting fires and attacking innocents.

Leader article first appeared in print in Tuesday's paper.