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Deluge of abuse sent on X to prominent UK politicians in election period


Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Diane Abbott, Suella Braverman and Sadiq Khan received between them 85,000 abusive messages, study finds

Five politicians – Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer, Diane Abbott, Suella Braverman and Sadiq Khan – were, between them, sent more than 85,000 clearly abusive messages between 1 May and 30 July, according to the findings from researchers at the University of Sheffield. There were big spikes in abuse against Abbott in March, when the Guardian revealed comments made by the Conservatives’ biggest donor, Frank Hester, and in June when there was a row over whether she could stand for re-election. The University of Sheffield researchers were limited in their ability to track abuse against all politicians on X because after it was bought by Elon Musk, the platform revoked free access to its application programming interface (API).

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