Downing Street has criticised Elon Musk after he claimed "civil war is inevitable" in the UK.
The Tesla chief, who owns Twitter/X, posted the comment besides a video of riots over the weekend on the social media platform. No10 has warned against stoking tensions online and told social media companies they have a responsibility to uphold standards on their sites.
Asks if he agreed with Mr Musk that civil war across the UK was "inevitable", Keir Starmer's official spokesman said: "There's no justification for comments like that and what we've seen in this country is organised violent thuggery that has no place on our streets or online.
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"As the Home Secretary said this morning, we're talking about a minority of thugs that do not speak for Britain and in response to it, we've seen some of the best of our communities coming out and cleaning up the mess and disruption."
Widespread anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim riots ripped through the country over the weekend, with a hotel housing asylum seekers in Rotherham deliberately set on fire on Sunday. Online misinformation about the identity of the suspect in the Southport attack, including false claims that he is Muslim and/or arrived on a small boat, has been blamed as the trigger point.
The PM's spokesman said: "The Government is engaging with social media companies. The Prime Minister has said that they have got a responsibility to ensure that they're not hosting illegal content and that engagement will continues between the Government, the police, the NCA and social media companies."
Asked if anything could be done given the online safety laws were not properly being enforced yet, he said: "They have a responsibility and should not be waiting for the Online Safety Act to come into force. There's already a legal framework for what is legal and what is illegal."
Online misinformation fuelling disorder on Britain's streets may be being amplified by foreign state actors, Downing Street has suggested. The Prime Minister's official spokesman told journalists: "I think some of this is public information that clearly we have seen bot activity online, much of which may well be amplified with the involvement of state actors amplifying some of the disinformation and misinformation that we've seen.
"And that is something that the NCA and DSIT are looking at in relation to what we've seen online. I obviously can't get into more detail than that, but it is clearly something that is being looked at."
The official declined to get into more detail on which states may be behind it, but added: "The disinformation that we've seen online attracts amplification from known bot activity, which, as I say, can be linked to state-backed activity".