Obvious misinformation then, but is it really responsible for the rioting? That would presuppose that the rioters — be they far-Right provocateurs or local yobs — care a great deal about the distinction between one kind of migrant and another. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that misinformation of this kind can cause riots. The next question, then, is whether banning Twitter would stop false rumours from spreading.

The answer, of course, is no. Even if there wasn’t a way of getting round a national ban on a global website (and there is), the misinformation would still circulate on other social networks. So what we’re really talking about here is a complete ban on social media.

We’d need to look at other forms of electronic communication too. In the wake of the 2011 riots, there was a major flap about the role played by the BlackBerry Messenger app (BBM) — an example of techno-scapegoating that looks rather silly in retrospect.

The fact is that misinformation doesn’t need the internet at all. You may recall the foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 — which was so bad that it delayed the general election that year. In the run up to the campaign, Conservative Central Office received multiple reports from party members that government officials were taking rooms in country pubs and hotels across the land. Supposedly, the visitors had told the locals that a massive further cull of the nation’s farm animals was being planned — one conveniently scheduled for after the election.

As the relevant desk officer in the Conservative Research Department, I was tasked with verifying this information. But upon contacting the informants, a familiar pattern emerged: basically the same story in every case, but always told at one remove. My interviewees hadn’t spoken to the visiting officials directly — instead, it was always a friend or a friend-of-a-friend. In other words, it shared the dynamics of a classic urban legend (or, in this case, a rural one).

2001 was before the age of social media. Facebook was still three years away from its launch date and Twitter five years away. But that didn’t stop an unfounded rumour from going viral.

It’s therefore doubtful that a digital clampdown could stop misinformation in its tracks. The proposal does, however, provide a distraction from the failures of immigration policy. There’s more than one way of obscuring the truth.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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