The Independent announces the return of its acclaimed Climate 100 List

Increasingly frequently, the world is suffering from more wild fires, flash floods, droughts, and hurricanes, caused by the human-induced climate crisis.

Recent data from Nasa revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of extreme weather events which are happening more regularly, are lasting for a longer period of time and are more severe, such as the LA fires in January that devastated tens of thousands of homes, recent deadly flooding in Beijing, and long heatwaves in the Nordic countries that even reach the Arctic Circle.

Across the US, ‘heat streaks‘ are on the rise, a phenomenon that’s seeing an increase in the number of consecutive hot days across its cities, with life-threatening temperatures. It’s becoming a pattern as for the second year running, the planet has reached record temperatures, following 2024 becoming the warmest year on record.

Alongside the physical extremes on the environment, the effects of the USA’s climate-sceptic administration’s rollbacks are already being felt. Cuts to overseas aid, which many conservation areas like Zambia’s Lower Zambezi National Park rely on, as do vulnerable nations like Malawi who are now struggling to prepare for climate disasters, will have long-lasting and devastating effects.

Despite more awareness than ever, the climate crisis is only worsening and it’s never felt more urgent to react. The Independent has long been at the forefront of calling for action and change when it comes to the climate, as well as reliably reporting on the severity of the global climate crisis.

It’s this understanding and commitment to resolving the issues that sees the important return of The Independent’s Climate 100 List. Back for its second year, it will be published again next month, aptly during the United Nations’ Summit of the Future in New York, part of the 16th annual Climate Week NYC.

The list brings together 100 changemaking and inspiring people to celebrate their contributions in finding positive climate solutions. From around the globe, it includes those who have dedicated their lives to the cause, as well as lesser known newcomers to the movement who need their voices heard and actions seen, across industries as broad as science to activism, food to politics, and business to entertainment, to name a few.

We want to continue to celebrate their courage, innovation and much-needed efforts in paving the way for a cleaner and greener future for the next generation.

The unveiling of the list will also align with the Climate 100 event held in New York, hosted by The Independent’s Editor-in-Chief, Geordie Greig, bringing together global changemakers, business leaders, scientists, policymakers, and activists.

Geordie Grieg, Editor-in-Chief of The Independent, says: “Now in the second year of Climate 100, we are excited to continue honoring leaders who are not just raising the alarm, but driving the solutions our planet urgently needs.”

The list is compiled by a team at The Independent, but as we know three out of four of our readers consider themselves to be environmentally friendly, a key part of the list is the Reader’s Choice category, which is returning after last year’s success.

We’re once again asking you, the readers, to get involved and submit your unsung climate hero – someone who has made a significant contribution to protecting the environment through their work and deserves to be properly recognised for it. Perhaps it’s a colleague, a classmate, a mentor, a peer or even a friend or family member.

Submit your nominations for The Independent’s Climate 100 List using the form below – and stay tuned: the full list lands in mid-September.

Inside the depraved world of migrant hunters tracking down asylum hotels

“You’re a traitor.”

Those were the words heckled last week to a driver pulling into RAF Wethersfield, a former Ministry of Defence airbase in Essex currently being used to house asylum seekers.

Livestreamed from an iPhone to tens of thousands of people online, the clip shows a group of so-called migrant hunters hurling abuse at the driver, presumed to be a worker at the airbase, and threatening to publish his car’s number plate.

This – verbally abusing staff and police officers on camera, before sharing the incident with fellow “patriots” – appears to be the modus operandi of the self–proclaimed migrant hunters, who are on the rise amid growing unrest over the government’s handling of the migration crisis.

Often posing as journalists, these far-right activists will turn up at accommodation centres and hotels with the intention of harassing those who work and live there. They then post the footage online with the aim of – according to experts – laying the groundwork for anti-migrant protests, which often descend into violence.

They also use Facebook and X to spread information about the locations of hotels which have been earmarked by the government to house asylum seekers. A post shared time after time in this corner of the internet is an interactive map, purporting to show the location of more than 200 hotels across the UK where migrants live.

Their methods for identifying accommodation for asylum seekers appear to be a myriad of tip-offs from disgruntled employees at the hotels in question, information from locals, as well as meticulous monitoring of Booking.com to check which 3* hotels have been blocked out for mass bookings.

Some of the most prominent migrant hunters have nearly 200,000 followers on X and tweet around 20 times a day, often peddling false and dangerous rumours about those inside the hotels. Among the more disturbing posts are unfounded claims of an upcoming terror attack, littered among AI generated images of far-right activist Tommy Robinson.

Recent research from the anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate found the number of migrant hunters had doubled since 2021 and that they had visited hotels housing asylum seekers on more than 250 occasions.

But activity on social media accounts connected to the movement has ramped up particularly in recent weeks, following anti-migrant protests in Epping, Essex which triggered similar demonstrations across the country. The unrest began in July after an asylum seeker from Ethiopia, believed to be staying at The Bell Hotel, was charged with sexual assault, including that of a 14-year-old girl.

Since then, protests have taken place in cities such as Manchester, London, Bournemouth and Edinburgh, with more planned for Friday evening as part of what organisers have called Abolish Asylum Day – a mass protest at eight different locations across the country where asylum seekers are being housed.

Far-right groups have been encouraging such protests for years, yet concerns are growing over the invasive tactics used by the migrant hunters, who appear to spend their time travelling to various hotels, doxxing their opposition and harassing those temporarily given refuge there.

They then use messaging apps such as Telegram, Signal and Whatsapp to spread the word

Speaking to The Independent, Joe Mullhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate, said these individuals first became prominent online during the spring of 2021.

“Originally they were on the beaches, filming the arrival of boats and doing daily tallies, before moving from areas like Dover to the accommodation centres. They were the content creating machine that was sitting under the far-right.” he said.

“They would release daily vlogs and livestreams which would percolate through the far-right system and get picked up by people like Tommy Robinson. They have been quite important in pushing cross-Channel migration up the agenda of the far-right.”

Having analysed the locations of protests, the anti-racism charity spotted a pattern – hotels targeted during the summer of violence in 2024 had often been visited multiple times by migrant hunters.

Riots were sparked across the UK last July after three girls were killed in a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, with a wave of misinformation on social media falsely claiming the killer was a Muslim asylum seeker.

Mr Mullhall added: “Where we saw those atrocious scenes and arson outside the Holiday Inn in Rotherham, migrant hunters had visited that hotel 12 times between 2021 and 2024. It’s interesting because that hotel is not in the city centre – people knew where to go, migrant hunters had laid the groundwork.”

Momentum has picked up again and these activists are once again livestreaming themselves at protests, quickly racking up thousands of comments and clicks online.

In Epping, one protest organiser told The Independent they had been made aware that the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf in London’s financial district was being repurposed by the Home Office after being contacted by an employee who had been made redundant.

Two protests broke out there after the information spread online.

Meanwhile, one former soldier, who claims to have raised more than £30,000 in donations to help fund an anti-migrant movement called the Great British National Protest, claims to be behind 20 demonstrations around the UK.

Richard Donaldson, 33, told The Times the money raised would be used to fund “covert investigations inside hotels”, and claimed to have recruited members of staff who were supposedly willing to wear hidden body cameras and share intelligence.

“There has been a proliferation of online social media accounts that are promoting anti-migrant sentiments,” Sabby Dhalu, co-convenor of Stand Up To Racism said.

“Firstly since Elon Musk took over X and secondly since Donald Trump became President, there has been a shift in the algorithm, a bias towards far-right material. Such content is getting a wider reach.”

She added: “We’ve noticed in our demonstrations that people say they are journalists and pick up their phones, but what they are really doing is doxxing people and identifying people they can target.”

On Monday, the Home Office announced it was providing another £100 million to tackle people smuggling and Sir Keir Starmer has struck a deal to return Channel migrants to France in exchange for asylum seekers with ties to the UK.

While the move has been criticised by refugee charities, the government are hoping it will prevent an outbreak of similar disorder to that of last summer.

Enver Solomon, CEO of Refugee Council, said: “Protests against people seeking asylum is causing alarm amongst adults and children who have fled war in countries such as Sudan and Afghanistan.

“Last summer, we witnessed refugees we support fear for their lives as an angry mob tried to set fire to the hotel where they were living. Rhetoric that dehumanises people who’ve come to Britain seeking sanctuary creates a climate where violence can flourish.

“Our frontline staff work in many of the communities affected and see that most people are fair-minded and compassionate. While they may have valid questions about why hotels are used, these concerns are being hijacked by a violent minority.

“Asylum hotels have become flashpoints – a symbol of a broken system that traps people in limbo, unable to work or rebuild their lives at huge public cost.”

Trump’s special envoy meets Putin for crunch ceasefire talks

US special envoy Steve Witkoff has met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow in an attempt to convince the Russian president to sign a ceasefire agreement with Ukraine.

US president Donald Trump has grown significantly frustrated with Mr Putin in recent weeks and has given him until this Friday to make progress toward peace in Ukraine or face tougher sanctions.

Mr Trump is reportedly considering imposing new sanctions on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers if Vladimir Putin does not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine by Friday.

Moscow’s “shadow fleet” – vessels whose ownership is secret – transports oil around the world to evade Western sanctions. White House sources say the sanctions would be an easy first step to try to force Mr Putin into a truce, according to the FT.

But sources close to the Kremlin say Mr Putin is unlikely to bow to the sanctions ultimatum.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday he had had a “productive” conversation with Mr Trump on ending the war, sanctions on Russia and the finalisation of a US-Ukraine drone deal.

Ward ‘severely short-staffed’ on day suicidal teenager self-harmed

A mental health hospital was “severely short-staffed” and missing “at least half” their workers on the day a vulnerable teenager fatally self-harmed, an inquest has heard.

Ruth Szymankiewicz, 14, died on 14 February 2022 after she was left alone at Huntercombe Hospital, near Maidenhead in Berkshire, despite requiring constant one-to-one observation, Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court was told.

Ruth, who had an eating disorder, Tourette syndrome and a tic condition, which had affected her mental health, was left alone for 15 minutes on 12 February, allowing her to make her way to her room, where she self-harmed. She was found and resuscitated before being transferred to John Radcliffe Hospital, but died two days later.

It later emerged that the care worker responsible for watching Ruth at the hospital’s psychiatric intensive care unit – a man then known as Ebo Acheampong – had been using false identity documents and was hired under a false name.

Ellesha Brannigan, who worked as a clinical team leader on the ward where Ruth was staying, said they were understaffed on the day the teenager was left alone.

She told the inquest: “On this day, we were severely short-staffed when we had come in for a shift. We were missing at least half of our staff this day and we really struggled to get staff to cover the observation levels. We needed the ward below us to send us staff during break times to enable staff to take breaks. Otherwise, breaks wouldn’t have been possible.”

She added: “Staffing was an issue for a long time, for a very long time there. It always was an issue, and me and other staff advocated for our ward and had several meetings with higher management about these staffing levels, but no changes were made.”

On the day Ruth self-harmed, a worker raised the alarm on the low staffing levels by recording it as a safety incident, known as a datix.

They wrote, “We’ve got inadequate staffing levels here” and warned that patient “observations might not be able to be kept” and cited “patient harm”, the court heard.

Ms Brannigan said that Mr Achempong was called to work on the ward that day due to short staffing. The senior nurse also said that due to staffing issues, there was only one staff member available per two patients who both needed regular in-person checks.

She said that shouldn’t happen, but “often” did due to a lack of available staff.

CCTV footage from the ward on the day Ruth was found unresponsive, shown to the court, revealed Mr Achempong left Ruth alone in a lounge just after 8pm.

His shift was due to end at 8.15pm, however, hospital protocol is for a staff member not to leave a patient needing one-to-one observation until they have handed over to another member of staff, Ms Brannigan told the court.

In the footage, Mr Acheampong can be seen leaving the room repeatedly – at first only for seconds at a time, then for two minutes – prompting the teenager to walk up to the door and look into the lobby, seemingly waiting for the opportunity to leave the room.

“Ruth is very aware that she is being left on her own,” coroner Ian Wade KC told the inquest. “Whichever way one looks at it, there has been an egregious breach of level three observation.”

The court also heard how new support care workers joining Huntercombe were required to complete an induction process with a chief nurse, who would then need to sign a checklist or the shift would have to be cancelled, Tim Moloney KC, representing the family, told the hearing.

This was not done for Mr Acheampong, with Ms Brannigan explaining: “We didn’t have the staff to do the induction for him.”

If you are experiencing feelings of distress or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans in confidence on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.

For anyone struggling with the issues raised in this article, eating disorder charity Beat’s helpline is available 365 days a year on 0808 801 0677. NCFED offers information, resources and counselling for those suffering from eating disorders, as well as their support networks. Visit eating-disorders.org.uk or call 0845 838 2040

Eminem’s manager says ‘Stan’ portmanteau was ‘happy coincidence’

Eminem’s longtime manager Paul Rosenberg has confirmed that the portmanteau behind the Detroit rapper’s signature song “Stan” was a “happy coincidence”.

Fans have speculated for years over whether the artist born Marshall Mathers, 52, deliberately blended the words “stalker” and “fan” when coming up with the name for the obsessed fan in his 2000 single, “Stan”.

Over the years, the word has become part of the lexicon when describing overzealous or obsessive fans of famous musicians, actors and other celebrities. In 2017, it was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, which noted that it could be used as a noun or a verb.

The lyrics to the original song tell of an obsessed fan growing more and more upset that Eminem isn’t responding to his letters, eventually accidentally driving his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend (played by Dido in the music video) tied up in the trunk.

Rosenberg explained the title’s origins while speaking to The Independent alongside Emmy-winning director Steven Leckart ahead of the limited release of a new documentary Stans, which he produced with Mathers.

“[Mathers] says that it was coincidental,” he said of the “Stan” portmanteau. “It was just the name that rhymed with ‘fan’, and he just created it based on that. So that was a happy coincidence.”

Rosenberg, 52, signed Mathers in 1997, when the rapper was 24 and had just released his Slim Shady EP. “Stan” was released as the third single from Eminem’s third album, The Marshall Mathers LP. It famously samples Dido’s song “Thank You”, which late producer The 45 King was inspired to use after seeing it featured in the 1998 film Sliding Doors.

“I didn’t realise at the time how impactful [‘Stan’] was going to be, and certainly didn’t think 25 years later we’d be sitting here talking about a film we made based on the song,” Rosenberg said.

“When I first heard it, I felt like one of the most interesting things about it – especially back then in the pre-internet days, was [thinking that] people would for years question whether this was a real story, or parts of a real story.”

Rosenberg pointed out that it was “jarring” due to the uncertainty over whether “Stan” was inspired by a real-life fan of Mathers: “Was there really a fan like this, and did something like this really happen?”

He continued: “What I didn’t think about back then is just the vision that Marshall had at such an early stage of his career to be able to write a story that was so perceptive about fandom – when he was really just sort of still getting started – and to do it in such a fantastically meta way. You know, this is a guy who is a star writing about fandom, but specifically writing about a fan of himself, right? Which was, you know, just so brilliant.”

The Dido sample, which loops the first verse with the lyrics, “But your picture on my wall/ It reminds me that it’s not so bad,” apparently reminded Mathers of his own hero worship of artists such as LL Cool J.

“It made him think about him coming up and putting up pictures of his heroes on his wall,” Rosenberg said, “and listening to their music and absorbing the feelings [of] imagining what these people are like and what their lives are like. That’s where the inspiration came from. Like, ‘I can’t believe that I’m in a position now where people are thinking this about me, because I spent so much time thinking this about others.’”

In the same interview, Rosenberg explained how he and Mathers had been approached on several occasions by producers or studios hoping to make an Eminem documentary.

“Marshall never really wanted to do something that was a standard or traditional ‘look back at my career’-type of documentary – he thinks it’s been done to death, but also feels like that’s something you do when you’re at the end of your career,” he said.

“I just kept thinking about ways to do something unique, that people would enjoy [and that] wasn’t traditional. So obviously, throughout the time working with Marshall and being at his shows and being around his fans, we realised that there were a lot of interesting people we had met with unique stories.”

Instead of pointing the camera at Mathers, who still appears in the documentary, the team instead began interviewing superfans, such as Zolt Shady, whom Rosenberg described as “such a unique and interesting guy”. One woman had Eminem’s face tattooed 22 times on her body, while another spent 10 years working in the same diner Mathers once did – in the hope she might one day see him walk in.

“I was more intrigued about [the premise of ‘Stans’] than if it had been the other way, because, I think there is just a glut of [documentaries] out there that are super straightforward,” Leckart said. “There’s no risk to them – they’re awesome, I watch them all the time, but as a filmmaker, to get to do something different… yeah, I was very excited.”

Rosenberg said the “most surprising” thing for him in making the documentary was how much Mathers’ fans had connected to him through his music “in so many different ways”.

“I didn’t expect it to be quite as heavy and emotional,” he said. “I probably could have anticipated that, but I thought we would get some interesting stories from some interesting people… and it [turned out to be] stories about the impact that his music had on them, in a profound and deep way. I think it made the film have more depth than I anticipated, and that I think the audience is going to expect.”

Stans is launching in cinemas worldwide and exclusively at AMC Theatres in the US for one weekend only from Thursday 7 August.

Ghislaine Maxwell never saw Trump do anything concerning with Epstein: report

Ghislaine Maxwell said that she never saw Donald Trump do anything that would cause concern, during her hours-long meetings with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche over the Jeffrey Epstein case, according to ABC News.

The Trump administration is considering whether to release the transcript from Blanche’s meetings with Maxwell last month, ABC News reported. CNN first reported that the meeting was recorded and is being digitized.

The White House has been trying to contain fallout from the so-called “Epstein Files” for weeks after a Justice Department memo concluded there were no more significant disclosures to be made in the case. Vice President JD Vance is holding a strategy meeting with other top officials Wednesday evening to work on their handling of the Epstein case, CNN reported.

Amid calls for increased transparency from across the political spectrum, Blanche met with Maxwell at a Florida courthouse for two days in July.

Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in a sex trafficking scheme to abuse girls with Epstein. Her attorneys have taken an appeal of her conviction to the Supreme Court.

“She was asked about maybe about 100 different people. She answered questions about everybody and she didn’t hold anything back,” her attorney David Oskar Markus said of her meetings with Blanche. “She never invoked a privilege. She never refused to answer a question. So we’re very proud of her.”

Blanche met with Maxwell in Tallahassee, Florida, where she was being held in federal prison. Earlier this week, she was moved to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas.

The president was asked Tuesday if he had personally approved Maxwell’s transfer. “I didn’t know about it at all. I read about it just like you did,” he said. “It’s not a very uncommon thing.”

Trump and Epstein were friendly in the 1990s and early 2000s and were seen together at parties in Palm Beach and New York.

Trump called Epstein a “terrific guy” in a 2002 New York Magazine article, and flight records show that he flew on the financier’s private jet.

Their friendship dissolved around the mid-2000s. After Epstein’s arrest on sex trafficking charges in 2019, the president told reporters he hadn’t spoken to him in 15 years. A Mar-a-Lago member told the Miami Herald that Trump had Epstein kicked out in 2007 after the financier “harassed the daughter of a member.”

The president has repeatedly called Epstein a “creep.” Last week, Trump revealed that he had ended his friendship with Epstein after he “stole” young female employees from his private club.

Trump has never been formally accused of wrongdoing or charged with any crime in connection with the Epstein case.

To try to quell the uproar over the Epstein Files, the president directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to release “any and all pertinent” grand jury transcripts from the Maxwell and Epstein criminal cases. Bondi filed requests with the courts to release the transcripts, which are under seal. Experts say these documents only make up a small portion of the files related to the investigations.

Maxwell, however, is opposed to unsealing the grand jury transcripts.

With her petition pending before the Supreme Court, her lawyers argued that releasing the raw transcripts would “inevitably influence any future legal proceeding” and cause “severe and irrevocable” reputational harm. Maxwell has never been allowed to review the documents, they said in a Tuesday memo to the court.

The judges overseeing the cases previously asked the government to address legal questions before they can consider releasing them.

On Monday, the DOJ gave the judges annotated versions of the transcripts, identifying what information is not publicly available. However in an attached memo, Bondi admitted that “much” of the information in the transcripts is already in the public domain.

“The enclosed, annotated transcripts show that much of the information provided during the course of the grand jury testimony—with the exception of the identities of certain victims and witnesses—was made publicly available at trial or has otherwise been publicly reported through the public statements of victims and witnesses,” Bondi wrote.

The attorney general also noted that the government has provided notice about its requests to unseal transcripts to all but one of the victims referenced in the documents. “The Government still has been unable to contact that remaining victim,” she wrote.

Annie Farmer, a survivor of Epstein who testified at Maxwell’s trial, voiced her support for unsealing the transcripts — with redactions to protect victims’ information — in a letter to the judges overseeing the New York cases.

“Given the magnitude and abhorrence of Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes, unsealing the grand jury transcripts is not just appropriate, it is necessary to understand the full scope of the abuse and those who enabled it,” Farmer’s attorneys wrote in a Tuesday filing.

Farmer called the DOJ’s decision not to investigate uncharged third parties in connection with Epstein as “a cowardly abdication of its duties to protect and serve.”

Two other Epstein survivors criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the case earlier this week. The victims remained anonymous and filed their letters in the New York case related to the late sex offender.

“The latest attention on the ‘Epstein Files’, the ‘Client List’ is OUT OF CONTROL and the ones that are left to suffer are not the high-profile individuals, IT IS THE VICTIMS. Why the lack of concern in handling such sensitive information for the victims sake?” one wrote in a Monday filing.

Another wrote: “Dear United States, I wish you would have handled and would handle the whole ‘Epstein Files’ with more respect towards and for the victims. I am not some pawn in your political warfare.”

The administration’s handling of the case has been under heightened scrutiny since the Justice Department released its July 6 Epstein memo, in which the DOJ confirmed that Epstein died by suicide and stated there was no evidence to support the existence of a “client list” of high-profile individuals involved in his alleged sex trafficking.

The memo put to an end months-long anticipation for new information in the Epstein case. In February, Bondi had released “Phase 1” of the files, a tranche of documents that included mostly publicly available information. She also suggested that the “client list”was sitting on her desk.

Parts of Trump’s MAGA base and prominent lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for heightened transparency around the Epstein files.

Those calls grew louder after the Wall Street Journal published a report last month claiming that the president drew a sexually suggestive 50th birthday card for Epstein in 2003. Trump has vehemently denied making the card and sued the Journal in a $10 billion defamation case.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that DOJ officials told the president in May that his name, among many others, had appeared in the Epstein Files. Being named in the files does not suggest any wrongdoing.

The president’s name was reportedly redacted from documents as the administration prepared for their potential public release, Bloomberg reported last week.

How Musk’s X fuelled racist targeting after Southport attack

New analysis investigating X’s algorithm has revealed how the platform played a “central role” in spreading false narratives fuelling riots in the UK last summer.

Amnesty International’s analysis of the platform’s own source code, published in March 2023, has revealed how it “systematically prioritises” content that “sparks outrage” – without adequate safeguards to prevent harm.

The human rights group said the design of the software created “fertile ground for inflammatory racist narratives to thrive” in the wake of the Southport attack last year.

On 29 July 2024, three young girls – Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe – were murdered, and 10 others injured, by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

Before official accounts were shared by authorities, false statements and Islamophobic narratives began circulating on social media last summer, the report said.

The consequences of this misinformation resulted in weeks of racist riots which spread across the country, with a number of hotels housing asylum seekers targeted by the far-right.

Amnesty International said that in the critical window after the Southport attack, X’s algorithm system meant inflammatory posts went viral, even if they contained misinformation.

The report found no evidence that the algorithm assesses the post’s potential harm before boosting it based off of engagement, allowing misinformation to spread before efforts to share correct information was possible.

“These engagement-first design choices contributed to heightened risks amid a wave of anti-Muslim and anti migrant violence observed in several locations across the UK at the time, and which continues to present a serious human rights risk today,” the report read.

“As long as a tweet drives engagement, the algorithm appears to have no mechanism for assessing the potential for causing harm – at least not until enough users themselves report it.”

The report also highlights the bias towards “Premium” users on X, such as Andrew Tate, who posted a video falsely asserting the attacker was an “undocumented migrant” who “arrived on a boat”.

Tate had been previously been banned from Twitter for hate speech and harmful content, but their accounts were reinstated in late 2023 under Elon Musk’s “amnesty” for suspended users.

Since his takeover of the platform in 2022, Musk has also laid off its content moderation staff, disbanded Twitter’s Trust and Safety advisory council and fired trust and safety engineers.

Pat de Brún, Head of Big Tech Accountability at Amnesty International said: “Our analysis shows that X’s algorithmic design and policy choices contributed to heightened risks amid a wave of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant violence observed in several locations across the UK last year, and which continues to present a serious human rights risk today.

“Without effective safeguards, the likelihood increases that inflammatory or hostile posts will gain traction in periods of heightened social tension.”

The Independent has contacted X for a comment.