Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

As UK authorities ramp up their assault on free speech, a viral post shared by Elon Musk exposes the glaring hypocrisy in the government’s “protect the children” narrative. Data from the The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) and police forces reveals Snapchat as the epicenter of online child sexual grooming, dwarfing X’s minimal involvement.

This comes amid Keir Starmer’s escalating war on X, where community notes routinely dismantle government spin, and unfiltered truth is delivered to the masses. If safeguarding kids was the real goal, it would be the likes of Snapchat in the crosshairs, given that thousands of real world child sexual offences have originated from its use.

Instead they’re going after X because, they claim, it provides the ability to make fake images of anyone in a bikini using the inbuilt Grok Ai image generator.

Based on 2025 NSPCC and UK police data, Snapchat is linked to 40-48% of identified child grooming cases, Instagram around 9-11%, Facebook 7-9%, WhatsApp 9%, and X under 2%.

These numbers align with NSPCC’s alarming report on the surge in online grooming. The charity recorded over 7,000 Sexual Communication with a Child offences in 2023/24—an 89% spike since 2017/18.

Where platforms were identified, Snapchat dominated at 48%, followed by WhatsApp at 12%, Facebook and Messenger at 10%, Instagram at 6%, and Kik at 5%.

NSPCC Chief Executive Sir Peter Wanless stated “One year since the Online Safety Act became law and we are still waiting for tech companies to make their platforms safe for children. We need ambitious regulation by Ofcom who must significantly strengthen their current approach to make companies address how their products are being exploited by offenders. It is clear that much of this abuse is taking place in private messaging which is why we also need the Government strengthen the Online Safety Act to give Ofcom more legal certainty to tackle child sexual abuse on the likes of Snapchat and WhatsApp.”

Victim testimonies underscore the horror. Thomas, groomed at 14, recalled: “Our first conversation was quite simple. I was just chatting. The only way I can describe it is like having the most supportive person that you could ever meet. After about a month, the pressure started to build of him trying to prove that I was gay. That’s when he started sending explicit pictures and pressuring me to send images to him. I did send him pictures, but I didn’t like it and I didn’t want to do it anymore. He said he had saved the images and would send them to everyone if I stopped sending more pictures. There was a constant fear in the back of my mind. It wasn’t easy but I managed to block him on all sites and carry on with my life.”

Liidia, a 13-year-old from Glasgow, highlighted Snapchat’s risks: “Snapchat has disappearing messages, and that makes it easier for people to hide things they shouldn’t be doing. Another problem is that Snapchat has this feature where you can show your location to everyone. If you’re not careful, you might end up showing where you are to people you don’t know, which is super risky. And honestly, not all the rules in Snapchat are strict, so some people take advantage of that to do bad things. Apps should have better ways for us to report bad things, and they should always get updated to protect us better with the latest security tech.”

NSPCC’s policy manager Rani Govender added: “The scale and significance of these crimes cannot be underestimated. No justification for tech company inaction.”

Becky Riggs, National Police Chief’s Council lead for child protection, urged: “It is imperative that the responsibility of safeguarding children online is placed with the companies who create spaces for them, and the regulator strengthens rules that social media platforms must follow.”

A Snapchat spokesperson claimed: “If we identify such activity, or it is reported to us, we remove the content, disable the account, take steps to prevent the offender from creating additional accounts, and report them to the authorities.”

The NSPCC on grooming tactics noted: “Perpetrators typically used mainstream and open web platforms as the first point of contact with children. This can include social media chat apps, video games and messaging apps on consoles, dating sites, and chatrooms. Perpetrators then encourage children to continue communication on private and encrypted messaging platforms where abuse can proceed undetected.”

Sextortion adds another layer of terror, with the Guardian reporting a “shocking” rise alarming the FBI and NSPCC. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) logged 546,000 global reports in 2024—a 192% jump from 2023—with 9,600 from the UK in the first half alone.

Snapchat reported 20,000 cases of adults grooming children last year, more than all other platforms combined.

The NCA warned: “Sextortion is a heartless crime, which can have devastating consequences for victims. Sadly, teenagers in the UK and around the world have taken their own lives because of it.”

Labour’s child protection claims ring completely hollow against the backdrop of stalled progress on Britain’s grooming gangs scandal. Despite scandals in Rotherham, Rochdale, and beyond exposing organized abuse—often dismissed to avoid racism accusations—little has advanced.

A government audit last month admitted the “concept of ‘grooming gangs’… is not captured clearly in any official data set.” Parliamentary debates urge stepping up the grooming gangs taskforce, but as UnHerd notes, these “rape gangs started in the 1990’s and accelerated as the Blair government shoved woke down our throats and made everyone afraid of being called racist.”

Raising the issue now risks “hate speech” labels, silencing victims and enabling perpetrators. Vague accusations of bigotry are increasingly garnering more attention than the actual crimes. This cultural relativism has fueled hate, per experts, while survivors’ stories get rewritten to downplay institutional failures.

Starmer’s regime isn’t prioritising kids—it’s weaponising safety pretexts in an effort to crush X’s influence. The platform’s free speech ethos and community notes expose leftist deceptions daily, threatening their narrative control.

As we highlighted earlier, US Under-Secretary Sarah B Rogers has warned “With respect to a potential ban of X, Keir Starmer has said that nothing is off the table. I would say from America’s perspective, nothing is off the table when it comes to free speech.”

She added: “America has a full range of tools that we can use” to bypass bans, like in Iran via Starlink. Rogers mocked Labour’s hypocrisy: if the government “cared about women’s safety, it would have acted differently on grooming gangs.”

As Starmer’s approval rating craters, threatening to fall into SINGLE digits, his desperation grows. But X endures as a beacon for truth, proving authoritarians can’t snuff out freedom without a fight.

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