Southport Inquiry Told Violent Material Stays Online for Weeks
A review for the Southport Inquiry found that violent material was still available two weeks after being reported in more than 80% of cases, across X, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram and Discord — the result of a single eight-hour search. Nicholas Moss KC, counsel to the inquiry, set out the finding as its second phase examines violence-fixated individuals and the role of the internet.
The number that will travel is the eight hours. One search, over a single working day, produced a body of material of which the great majority was still reachable a fortnight after being flagged — which goes directly to the question the Online Safety Act was written to answer, namely whether platforms remove what they are told about. The inquiry’s second phase is not re-examining the attack itself but the ecosystem around it: how a violence-fixated individual accumulates material, and what the companies did or did not do. Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, were killed at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport on 29 July 2024, and twenty-three other children were physically or psychologically injured. The practical consequence of a finding like this is regulatory rather than criminal: it hands the regulator a measured, inquiry-sourced figure to set against the platforms’ own compliance claims, at exactly the point when enforcement powers are being tested for the first time. Watch for Ofcom’s response, and whether the inquiry asks the named companies to account for the specific reports.