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Big Tech is stoking unrest in the UK. Why?

• umeshunni 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  • tonyedgecombe 4mo ago
    The comments on the FT are rarely worth reading even though you need to be a subscriber to comment.
  • dwroberts 4mo ago
    Comments being used as measure of 'public sentiment' is one of the ways perception is being manipulated by big tech in the first place. In the archived version (linked elsewhere) there is a sea of negative comments within ~55 minutes of the article being posted, I seriously doubt a large percentage of them are legitimate (all of them doing the same routine, telling the exact same lines and stories).
• deleted 4mo ago
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• 4dregress 4mo ago
  Simple answer is power, look at how things have changed since Musk bought the largest communication platform on the planet. Look at who's backing him and what they want. The UK's stance goes right against the values and goals these billionaires want and that's basically to do whatever they want without recourse. What better way to sow diversion than to stoke civil unrest and cause change to the systems that stand in their way.
  • throwyawayyyy 4mo ago
    I'm sure it's about power. I am also sure that having that much wealth, that little accountability, being surrounded by people who've a vested interest in telling you you're a genius, would make anyone go a little insane. Call it Roman Emperor syndrome. Not many people can be Marcus Aurelius.
    • dofm 4mo ago
      As much as I abhor his behaviour and think the world does not need stateless trillionaire bullies, the blame for Elon Musk's deteriorating character does not lie with his money or his yes-men. It was baked in right from the start. We need to understand on a societal level how this happens. The blame lies with Errol and Maye, who are absolutely fucking awful people (particularly Errol, a man even Elon describes as despicable) who should never have had children, and who are responsible for the early childhood trauma and neglect etc. that turned Elon into a textbook malignant narcissist. We would pity that man if he were not so destructive, because he is broken in a way that nobody can fix. Part of me does pity him. And FWIW I do believe that at his best, he fights against this — he is clearly aware of who broke him and how, and I do think that at his best he is trying to build things for people rather than surrender to hating everyone because they cannot give him enough love to fill the hole inside. At his worst, which is now, he's just a malevolent force — a textbook Bond villain. He will only get worse as he attracts more hatred he cannot unsee. It's the same for Donald Trump (broken by evil, evil parents) and Andrew Tate (broken by an evil, cruel father at the very least.)
    • RetroTechie 4mo ago
      Hehe... in ancient Rome, a billionaire-type sociopath would be poisoned, killed on a battlefield, or (as is the fashion these days), fall through a window in a high-rise office building. NOT proposing that as a fix! But society at large would do well to ask why we let such extreme wealth (and with that: power) concentrate in the hands of so few individuals. These aren't demi-gods! These are people with all the failings & weaknesses regular folks have. Spread the risk ffs.
  • clear-octopus 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • AaronAPU 4mo ago
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    • mcphage 4mo ago
      That a significant cause of death in the UK, then?
• jiddert8 4mo ago
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  • hagbard_c 4mo ago
    Don't capitalise black, don't capitalise white, write like we used to do before the identity politicos started messing things up. Even by capitalising white you're falling into their trap of raising identity as a political factor. Dump the lot of those identity politicos in the bin where they belong and let's get to the actual issues no matter what they say.
    • jiddert8 4mo ago
      [flagged]
  • 4dregress 4mo ago
    Sad to see this nonsense on hacker new, looks like a bot account.
    • noworriesnate 4mo ago
      I always found a certain line from Bob Dylan a bit haunting: > The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast > The slow one now will later be fast > *As the present now will later be past* > The order is rapidly fadin' > And the first one now will later be last > For the times, they are a-changin' We're seeing this now. Times are a-changin' indeed.
    • tomhow 4mo ago
      Please just flag egregious comments or email us (hn@ycombinator.com) if it seems like something needs moderator attention. We've had bad stuff on HN since the start. We can deal with it easily if we know about it.
      • jiddert8 4mo ago
        [dead]
• spwa4 4mo ago
  The whole reason the British government pushed Brexit was so Britain could control its immigration. That's how Brexit was presented to the population, that's why people voted for it. Then the government got Brexit, and then Boris Johnson more than tripled immigration, chasing away EU immigration and getting all the immigrants from the (very coincidentally very low-wage Pakistan, I mean there aren't very many countries anywhere that have lower average wages than Greece) https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/12/30/how-the-take-back-control-crowd-boosted-immigration-to-britain https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/12/30/how-the-take-ba... ( https://archive.ph/krvMU https://archive.ph/krvMU ) Meanwhile the government did not fix the housing issue, the cost of living disaster in London, the unemployment problem, ... and so on. And the central UK government forced small towns, cities and the like into bankruptcy. Now, in the UK, things like social support are financed by municipalities EXCEPT when it comes to immigrants. So, effectively, the government massively increased immigration, reduced social support and raised taxes on everybody except immigrants. Then the government blamed very large youth services scandals, like the Rotherham scandal, on immigrants. This, despite the fact that these children had been taken from their homes by youth services and were under their custody AND despite the fact that youth services AND the police have been credibly accused of taking payoffs. Those people were definitely not immigrants, but they did not feature in the court proceedings "for some reason". So government causes, to varying extents, large social problems. It ostensibly saves immigrants from these problems, and then the government itself blames immigrants for problems the government caused. The problem here is not Twitter. I mean, they're not helping. But they're not the problem.
  • monooso 4mo ago
    Regardless of whether you're correct, that wasn't the subject of the article.
    • Jiro 4mo ago
      It's implied by the article that there wouldn't be much opposition to immigration without big tech. That isn't true if there is widespread opposition to immigration anyway and the government broke its promise about dealing with it.
• danny_codes 4mo ago
  Billionaires can't have the UK passing sensible taxation policies to curtail the influence of the super-rich. If the UK achieves success in preventing the collapse of their society into a form of feudal poverty, Americans might catch on that there are other options. The Musk-types enjoy playing god and would rather risk systemic collapse than shed some part of their power.
• eyevz 4mo ago
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  • isodev 4mo ago
    You mean the made up idea of immigration as a problem? Sure. What Brits probably want more is to rejoin the EU, get back some leverage on the world scene and dig themselves our of the brexit hole
    • deleted 4mo ago
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    • 1dom 4mo ago
      I don't think it's a made up idea that immigration is a problem, some people clearly, definitely consider it a problem, and it can cause problems. But it's a problem that's been heavily worked on recently and has had a lot of success in solving in the UK over the past 2 years. This is why it's completely barmy to suggest the average brit is fed up of immigration now, and I'm not sure why many people pointing that out are being heavily downvoted.
  • refurb 4mo ago
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    • bigyabai 4mo ago
      As an American, I can assure you that policy issues and corporate meddling are in fact not mutually exclusive.
      • refurb 4mo ago
        I think you missed the point. Claiming legitimate voter unhappiness with some sort of conspiracy of foreign actors, is Politics 101. It's massive spin. They have citizens rioting on their streets and yet somehow claim it's nefarious foreign actors.
  • 4mo ago
• TrackerFF 4mo ago
  Same reason as always: Wealthy people want less taxes, more power, and will lobby for the parties that always promise less taxes: Those on the right. The problem is that the conservative and traditional right aren't too popular, so they need to go for the far-right. Those parties are in full MAGA-mode, focusing on things like immigration. It is so, so much easier to sway public opinion by blowing up incidents involving immigrants, than to convince the public that they should accept reduction or degradation of services due to tax cuts. Far-right politicians discovered some time ago that they can straight up lie through their teeth, and face zero consequences. And those lies will propagate through social media, and people will accept them as facts. It seems like critical thinking among huge parts of the population is considerably down. I've heard seemingly smart people I know regurgitate lies they've picked up on social media, which they could have fact checked in 30 seconds.
  • rob_c 4mo ago
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    • 1attice 4mo ago
      Trust me, the climate is in as rough a shape as those so-called extremists would have you believe. You can quite literally read it off the veniers, or at least we could until we hired a strong man to smash them. Nuclear is another matter -- I reckon the European anti-nuclear movement set climate change ahead by at least several years, but these days the cost/benefit leans solar, as political unrest pairs poorly with nuclear hazards, as Ukraine has learned in the past five years. Nevertheless, the UK's administrative class' fetish for "sensible" solutions works great except during a generational upheaval, when they can't (to borrow a metaphor from aviation) see the horizon and must trust their instruments and the data they deliver. It's the same here in Canada, I am sorry to report. A Commonwealth cultural tic we would all best be mindful of, lest we wear sensible shoes that take us all the way to calumny.
      • rob_c 4mo ago
        There are extremists who claimed the ocean would be destroyed by acid rain, oil would run out by 2020 and co2 levels would push the temps to 25+C in the UK for most of the year. None of these things have happened but these people were still let near schools unvetted with these claims in the 90s. If day we've learned to communicate science better but fools in the know all to quickly become political bedfellows with money with agendas attached to it...
• rob_c 4mo ago
  Yeah that article is missing a very major point that immigration in the UK hasn't meant assimilation or a coherent mixing of cultures as people want or may have observed at times. The problems in the UK are actually focused around sticky blobbyness caused by a) lack of integration, b) left vs right flavor of the moment causing further segregation and c) long term socioeconomic factors leading to govt(councils) fixing the problem in the cheapest way possible which is unfortunately high profile in the British high street by the public. A lot of British are moving out of the city centers themselves (or already have) and into suburbs which leaves the cities hollowed out. Lack of footfall means lack of investment means decay and cheap housing/buildings. All of this is a predicable recipe for friction but very short term British politics combined with a "not my problem" attitude prevalent in the nhs and public sectors means people doubled down in short term solutions for over a generation. That combined with more hardship causes people to look at the biggest broken problem which is our immigration system needed reforming over 20yr+ ago and unfortunately this was locked into place by EU laws and policy (such ironically we pushed for, for other political reasons). It's less of a grand conspiracy and more of the dominoes we're set to fall this way after dragging us out of the 80s without fixing anything and then the post recession being used to fuel boom and growth vs fixing underlying issues at a national level.
  • kjkjadksj 4mo ago
    British people miss the fact that assimilation happens in the generation after the immigrant generation. Italian immigrants were looked down on in the US too. Too catholic, not speaking the language and not engaging in american culture practices. The next generation speaks fluent english and is scarcely different than any other american out of the school system.
    • deleted 4mo ago
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    • deleted 4mo ago
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    • _DeadFred_ 4mo ago
      I wonder if we (the countries experiencing mass immigration numbers) are also missing that between 1908 and 1923 35% to 40% of all immigrants who arrived in the U.S. eventually returned to their home countries. I wonder if those were people who were unable to assimilate and if those numbers are true today or if with access to media from home, etc, it no longer occurs as much and the dynamics today are incomparable to historical immigration/assimilation patterns.
• SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
  I agree with most of what the article has to say, but I feel like it's dancing around the fundamental issue. Like: > These apparently disparate events all feature one obvious commonality: race. In each case, the riots were sparked by an act of violence in which the victim(s) were white and the attackers were not. The context: these events were focused largely in ethnically diverse working-class neighbourhoods, communities where resources are stretched. I know the author is smart and informed enough to see the parallels between this and a number of high-profile incidents in the past decade. There's an increasingly widespread idea that this is simply how a wise person should see interracial crime, not as a series of tragic individual incidents but as attacks on the whole of Group X by the whole of Group Y. The idea has achieved enough prominence that it's starting to overcome the hard-fought taboo on white identitarianism, and now for the first time in decades we have to deal with it as an open political force. I emphasize that white identitarianism is a bad ideology, incompatible with many of the nice things we enjoy about the modern world, and we have to defeat rather than accommodate it. But defeating it requires taking a serious look at the factors that allow it to grow.
  • archagon 4mo ago
    It could well be the case that the growth of white identitarianism is almost entirely driven by white supremacist media moguls, who are unfathomably rich and shape the zeitgeist to a large degree. See also: antisemitism in Nazi Germany. I’m sure some Jewish people committed serious crimes against non-Jewish Germans. But that was incidental, not causal, to the vile propaganda that eventually led to the Holocaust.
    • SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
      It could be, but I really don't think so. The splintering of Reform UK and then Restore Britain strongly suggests to me that there's a mass movement. If it were a plot by media moguls, I would have expected them to carefully manage discontent to keep people within the Tories.
      • roryirvine 4mo ago
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
  It appears archive.today has removed the Javascript and CAPTCHA requirements as well as the DDoS against the blog Your IP address and any optional headers you send, e.g., user-agent, will be returned in an HTML comment at the top of the response body
  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
    Now a user-agent is required again. LOL
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
  Text-only from WARC: curl https://ghostarchive.org/chimurai4/4KevH.warc \ |grep -o articleBody\":\".*\",\"wordCount \ |sed 's/articleBody\":\"//;s/.\{42\}follow FT Weekend on Instagram.*\",\"wordCount//;s/\\n/@/g' \ |tr @ '\n' \ |fmt
• tim333 4mo ago
  "Big Tech" seems to basically be Elon Musk, known for nazi salutes and nazi grandparents who moved out of South Africa because it wasn't racist enough.