Westminster needs to wean itself off X, a close ally of Keir Starmer has said, as he suggested that Elon Musk was deliberately manipulating its algorithm to boost his own political and personal interests.
Josh Simons, the MP for Makerfield and former head of the Starmerite thinktank Labour Together, said he believed the British political class was dangerously addicted to the platform, formerly known as Twitter. Simons maintains an active X profile, but says he is keen not to “overuse” it.
His comments reflect a growing concern among Labour MPs about the impact of X after the summer’s riots, during which misinformation spread rapidly on the platform. But they also threaten to exacerbate tensions between the government and the company, with Musk continuing to attack Starmer over ministers’ response to the violence.
Simons, a technology expert who wrote a book on artificial intelligence, told the Guardian in an interview: “I think that Twitter’s algorithm, its ranking model, which determines what we see on Twitter when we open it, has manifestly changed since Elon Musk took over. Not least because I don’t think I’ve ever liked anything that he said ever, and I see loads of him all the time, and I really don’t want to.
“I’ve even said: ‘Show less of this,’ and there he is, every time. And that’s a sure sign – when a founder and owner of a company, you see more of them on an algorithm, despite not liking them – [of] something going on.”
He added: “I think that it is totally and completely wrong and harmful to British democracy that the Westminster bubble gets to know each other through a ranking model designed by a man who’s spending his life campaigning for Donald Trump. I think that it’s shortsighted of us all.”
X did not respond to a request to comment.
Relations between the government and the social media company have been tense since the summer’s riots, which experts say were fanned by online misinformation regarding the identity of the attacker who killed three children in Southport.
As the violence escalated, Musk posted repeatedly about them, including one video of riots in Liverpool, which he annotated with the quote “civil war is inevitable”. Downing Street publicly criticised those comments, saying they had “no justification”, and in turn was greeted with another volley of angry posts from Musk.
The X owner renewed his attack on the Labour government last month after not receiving an invitation to Monday’s international investment summit. “I don’t think anyone should go to the UK when they’re releasing convicted pedophiles [sic] in order to imprison people for social media posts,” he posted, in apparent reference to the government’s early release scheme.
Many Labour MPs have quit X and set up profiles on rival platforms such as Bluesky instead.
Simons, who used to work for Meta on its AI programme and is now standing for election to the Commons technology select committee, said he thought the new generation of MPs were more sceptical about the platform than their predecessors.
“The mood is changing quite radically,” the 31-year-old said. “I actually think Twitter has a bit of a sort of Boomers/Gen-Xer thing about it. It’s interesting that among the new intake, quite a lot of people are quite sceptical about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t ever use it, not least because it gives us another tool to be seen on.”
He also said he believed the debate over AI had been dominated for too long by older politicians who did not grow up steeped in technology in the way his own generation did. Such people, he said, were often either overly optimistic or overly pessimistic about how the technology could change the way government works.
The former prime minister Tony Blair and the former Conservative leader William Hague have been two of the most outspoken advocates for the widespread adoption of AI by the public sector. The former prime minister Rishi Sunak has spoken positively about its potential but also warned about its “existential risk” to humanity.
Simons said: “There is a generation [that] didn’t actually grow up with data and technology, and they have these very simplistic, reductivist, often either utopian or apocalyptic ways of thinking about the future of the state or public services or the economy in relation to technology.
“AI can often be a distraction from going one level deeper into the technology, in order to understand its policy and political implications better.”
