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Louise Thomas
Editor
Far-right riots across England have been fuelled by online disinformation ever since a group sprang up on an app owned by Russian exiles to exploit a tragedy in which three children were killed.
Police are working to prevent more disorder, with over 400 people arrested and dozens of officers injured in cities all over the country.
More far-right action was planned for Wednesday, with immigration law firms targeted, but mobs failed to appear and instead tens of thousands of anti-racist counter-protesters took to the streets.
The first riot took place in Southport on 30 July in response to the deaths of Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Dasilva Aguiar, nine. They were attending a dance class in the town the day before when they were killed in a multiple stabbing which left eight other children injured.
Axel Rudakubana, who has been charged with their murders, was not initially named due to being 17 when he was arrested. This is when misinformation about the suspect became rife online, with many claiming that he was a Muslim and asylum seeker – both untrue.
Following the killings, a broadcast channel on messaging app Telegram was set up, titled ‘Southport Wake Up’. It would remain open for nearly a week, amassing over 13,000 members.
The earliest messages in the channel were used to organise and mobilise the far-right rioters in Southport on 30 July who attacked a mosque. It remained open, sharing locations for rioters to mobilise over the weekend, with some of the plans resulting in widespread disorder and destruction of property.
Founded in 2013 by Russian -born brothers Pavel and Nikolai Durov, Telegram is an instant messaging service that has a range of social media features. It allows users to set up ‘channels’ – large public groups which can broadcast messages to up to 200,000 people. Many of these can be searched for on the platform, others require a link.
After more plans were shared for Wednesday, The Independent approached Telegram to ask if it planned to remove the channel. The following day, spokesperson Remi Vaughn said: “The channels publishing calls to violence have been removed.”
He added: “Telegram’s terms of service explicitly forbid calls to violence. Moderators use a combination of proactive monitoring of public parts of the platform and user reports in order to remove content that breaches our terms of service.
“Each day, millions of pieces of dangerous content are removed before they can cause harm.”
Despite this, dozens of large channels which routinely share far-right content on the app remain open. Many of these have continued to share details of plans for Wednesday.
At 9am that day, four separate channels reshared the full list of locations for far-right action. They had a collective membership of just under 200,000 users, with the message receiving a shared 13,000 views.
In a disclaimer to the message, the original poster cites “freedom of the press”, adding: “This list does not constitute an endorsem*nt of any protest action that may lead to violence.”
Replies to the message would suggest it was interpreted otherwise, with users sharing rioting tactics, discussing how to start a ‘revolution,’ and mocking police for preventing them from ‘[stopping] children getting stabbed’. In these comment sections and across all the channels, anti-Muslim rhetoric, racist memes and racial slurs are used casually.
“Telegram is the transnational far-right extremist platform of choice,” says Professor Matthew Feldman, a specialist on right-wing extremism who teaches at the University of York.
“Fascists, neo-nazis and the broader far-right have truly found a home there because they’re not being deplatformed or removed. Their content is safe, secure and they can continue to, more or less, say what they like.”
Prof Feldman points out that the app’s moderation team is “less than a dozen”, compared to Facebook’s tens of thousands of moderators.
Telegram’s privacy policy says it would provide information about anonymous posters to authorities if asked to do so, but claims it never has been. Telegram currently operates out of Dubai.
When joining a far-right channel on the app, users are presented with a box making them aware of “similar channels”. This makes it very easy for someone exposed to one source of far-right misinformation to quickly gain access to many more. Users are limited to seeing nine recommendations but can see an unlimited amount if they pay £34.99 for a year of Telegram Premium.
Cross-posting between channels is common, allowing users to trace some messages back to their origins. Even if a message has been deleted or has disappeared from its source channel, it will remain live in channels to which it has been forwarded.
Some of these are run by well-known individuals such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, or former BNP leader Nick Griffin.
But most operate under pseudonyms, sharing conspiracy theories, fascist or nazi rhetoric, and racist content. It seems they operate with near-impunity on the platform as they share cherry-picked news stories to their large audience, often alongside quotes from figures like Adolf Hitler or Oswald Mosley, and Islamophobic misinformation.
Telegram’s approach to anonymity, privacy and verification makes the platform very attractive for far-right users. The app offers end-to-end encryption, making it near-impossible for anyone but the sender and the recipient to see messages. Regular users can decide their own screen name and change it regularly, without needing to prove their identity.
Prof Feldman, who has worked with the CPS on far-right terrorism, said: “You have to look really hard for fascist and neo-nazi extremists who are minded to engage in political violence and not on Telegram.”
He says there is a network of far-right groups on the platform who go by the collective name ‘Terrorgram.’ The group was listed as a proscribed terrorist organisation by the government in April 2024.
Although moderation is lacking on Telegram, this does not mean illegal activity is permitted on the app. Director of public prosecutions Stephen Parkinson has said he is “absolutely” seeking to prosecute people for online offences related to the rioting.
He added: “If you’re engaged in that activity, then you can be prosecuted for the substantive offence that you have caused [due] to what you’ve been doing using the internet.”
On 6 August, Jordan Parlour became the first person to be convicted of stirring up racial hatred online in connection to the riots. In that case the 28-year-old had made online comments advocating an attack on a hotel in Leeds.
It remains to be seen whether the government will call on Telegram to release information about users, which the company’s policy indicates it would comply with.
A government spokesperson said: “We expect social media companies to take their responsibilities seriously and that includes countering the misleading and inflammatory material hosted on their platforms.”
“People already being charged for illegal online activity should serve as a warning to anyone who intends to use any platform to incite hatred.”
Ofcom has released an open letter to online service providers, requesting they take steps to prevent the spread of “harmful video material stemming from the recent events”.
Group director for online safety Gill Whitehead said: “We expect continued engagement with companies over this period to understand the specific issues they face, and we welcome the proactive approaches that have been deployed by some services in relation to these acts of violence across the UK.”
Under the Online Safety Act, passed last year, the telecoms watchdog will be given greater powers to enforce the systematic removal of illegal content from social media platforms operating in the UK. Ofcom says this will happen by the end of the year, while experts including Prof Feldman predict that early 2026 is more realistic.
A Telegram spokesperson claimed moderators had removed any calls to violence in its channels.
They added: “Telegram is used by people on both sides of the political spectrum, including Black Lives Matter protestors, pro-democracy movements in Belarus and Hong Kong and normal people living under authoritarian regimes.”
