Did hundreds of British citizens, including journalists, actually report being questioned by police about their posts on X over one weekend? No, that's not true: There's no evidence that so many people were questioned by police in England over a single weekend because of what they put on social media. Sometimes, police might investigate social media posts if they involve serious issues, like criminal activity or serious threats, but there's no reliable information confirming that such a large number of people were questioned this way.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on X on November 13, 2024. The post's caption said:
🚨BREAKING: Hundreds of British citizens, including journalists, are reporting that they've been visited by the police this weekend regarding X posts.
Make Orwell fiction again. 🤒
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 16:49:09 2024 UTC)
Elon Musk
Elon Musk, the majority owner of X, shared and spread this unproven assertion on social media, which has reached tens of millions of views. In a post on November 14, 2024, Musk reacted to the claim, calling the situation "Crazy." Musk's post (archived here) appears below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 19:06:29 2024 UTC)
The original post didn't give any proof to back up its assertion of hundreds of British citizens being questioned over their X posts the weekend starting November 8, 2024, and neither did Musk's retweet.
Google News search
A Google News search (archived here) focused on Great Britain showed no recent stories about people reporting police inquiries into their social media activity.
Also, two advanced searches on X here and here (archived here and here) provided only one example of a person being questioned by British police over a social media post (archived here) that weekend. It's included below:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Nov 14 18:54:51 2024 UTC)
The journalist
A single journalist did report being questioned by police over the weekend. detailed her experience in a column (archived here) on November 12, 2024, in The Daily Telegraph. She said it involved a year-old tweet.
Metropolitan Police Service
The Metropolitan Police, also called Scotland Yard, is the largest police force in England. It covers nearly all of London -- 32 boroughs -- but excludes the square mile of the City of London.
In a November 14, 2024, email to Lead Stories, Chris Humphreys, the senior media and communications manager for the Metropolitan Police, dismissed the social media claim. He said:
We're not going to give credibility to accounts like the one you reference by treating their posts as ones that warrant our attention.
A simple review of their content should provide you with sufficient evidence of their intent and their attachment to accuracy and the truth.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims concerning the United Kingdom are here.
