Society’s challenges will not be solved by closing down Twitter or banning TikTok - Susan Dalgety

Health secretary Wes Streeting recounted how during the recent general election campaign a fake WhatsApp message appeared to be using his voice

The First Minister John Swinney definitely thinks so. In the wake of the recent riots, he demanded that social media companies crack down on “false information”. He pointed to an incident in Stirling last weekend where false information had been circulated about a stabbing.

The perpetrator was wrongly alleged to be from the Muslim community. He said the story had been spread to “stir up hatred” and praised Police Scotland for immediately intervening to stop the material being spread further.

Speaking during a Fringe event a few days ago, Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting recounted how, during the recent general election campaign, a fake WhatsApp message which appeared to be his voice “using the most foul language about dead Palestinian children” went viral in his Ilford North constituency.

He said: “It was so shocking. If I had heard that I wouldn’t have voted for that candidate even if it was a Labour candidate. As we are finding in the world of fake news, propaganda, deep fakes, the lie travels a lot faster than the truth.”

And former First Minister Humza Yousaf, also speaking at an event on the Fringe, described the owner of X/Twitter, Elon Musk as one of the “most dangerous men on the planet”. Yousaf, who has more than a quarter of a million followers on the platform, claimed that Musk uses it to amplify the far-right.

There is no doubt that far-right thugs use social media to spread their messages of hate and division. Messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Telegram are used to organise so-called protests which are in reality riots. Anti-immigration hashtags on X/Twitter such as #enoughisenough and #TwoTier help disseminate hatred.

There is also ample evidence that the far-right use Facebook and Tik Tok to amplify fake news. But there is an air of desperation about the rush by politicians to blame society’s ills on social media. No doubt it has a role to play and Ofcom, the agency that has responsibility for regulating social media, needs to do more to improve how platforms handle dangerous or fake content.

But for most of us, social media improves our lives. It helps families stay in touch, even when separated by thousands of miles. It provides a window on the world, allowing collaborations between schools in Edinburgh and sub-Saharan Africa to flourish. I use X/Twitter for an immediate news feed, and my 12-year-old granddaughter is now an expert at crochet thanks to YouTube.

Of course, no-one, least of all the owners of powerful social media platforms, should condone hate speech. They must invest more in algorithms – the computer commands that make social media work – to monitor content as well as moderators to check what is being posted. But social media is not the root cause of our troubles. The challenges we face as a country are complex and deep-rooted and will not be solved by closing down X/Twitter or banning TikTok.