Two men have been jailed for stirring up hatred on social media during widespread disorder across parts of the UK.
Tyler Kay, 26, was sentenced to 38 months in prison for publishing "utterly repulsive, racist" posts on X.
Jordan Parlour, 28, received a 20-month prison sentence for publishing written material intended to stir racial hatred on Facebook.
What connects a dad living in Lahore in Pakistan, an amateur hockey player from Nova Scotia - and a man named Kevin from Houston, Texas?
They’re all linked to Channel3Now - a website whose story giving a false name for the 17-year-old charged over the Southport attack was widely quoted in viral posts on X. Channel3Now also wrongly suggested the attacker was an asylum seeker who arrived in the UK by boat last year.
It’s become a familiar pattern of events: a violent, terrifying attack unfolds, innocent people are killed, and social media is set alight with unfounded - and often incorrect - accusations about about the assailant's identity and what the motivation was.
Think back to the stabbing attacks in Sydney earlier this year, falsely blamed on a Jewish student, or even the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in July.
It’s the same with Monday’s attack on a children’s holiday dance and yoga session in Southport, England.
"Vote Reform UK", "Only Reform UK has a real plan for Britain" - an account on X has posted these and similar messages every couple of hours since the start of the election campaign.
The account, GenZBloomer, is one of dozens across X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok which the BBC has identified as posting hundreds of repeated messages in comment threads expressing support for Reform UK.
Criminals are selling guides on social media on how to carry out sextortion, BBC News has learned.
The guides show people how to pose as young women online, trick a victim into sending sexually explicit material and then blackmail them.
On Tuesday, Olamide Shanu appeared in court in London. He is believed to be part of a gang that made £2m from blackmailing adults and children online.
On April 17, 2024, an account named StorieSpot posted images of a purported "cat's eye dazzle" flower in the Facebook group National Geographic Wild Planet. (The group, which has more than 1.4 million members, does not appear to have any official affiliation with National Geographic.) According to the pictures, the flower closely resembles a kitten's face.
The post read, "Amazing plants! Cat's eye dazzle." It received more than 80,000 likes and 36,000 shares, at the time of this writing.
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