Southport killer fed his 'lust for gore' online as inquiry finds violent content stayed up weeks after being reported

From the Newshound archive · first published 6 October 2026.

The Southport Inquiry has established that Axel Rudakubana fed a 'lust for gore' through violent material freely available on social media, with a commissioned report exposing catastrophic platform failures to remove harmful content. An eight-hour sweep across X, TikTok, Reddit, Instagram and Discord uncovered a broad range of violent material — 98.9% of it publicly accessible and 92.3% carrying no age restrictions whatsoever. Rudakubana killed six-year-old Bebe King, seven-year-old Elsie Dot Stancombe and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport in July 2024.

By the two-week point, 83.8% had not been taken down — material hosted across X, TikTok and Instagram.

Platform providers including TikTok, Reddit, X and Alphabet will be questioned by the inquiry over what counsel Nicholas Moss KC described as 'arguable delay and failures to remove the material'.