Revealed: how fake stories about government plans to curb personal freedoms have spread across social media

A series of videos falsely claiming that the UK government or other authorities are introducing new measures to limit personal freedoms have been shared more than 300,000 times on social media, a Full Fact investigation reveals.

Since late July we’ve fact checked 10 such videos, ranging from false warnings about the monitoring of cash withdrawals and phone calls being recorded to a bizarre claim about people being fined for sitting on public benches too long.

The claims we’ve seen have been shared across multiple accounts and social media platforms, and sometimes in different formats, so it’s unclear to what extent they are linked.

But all centre on a similar theme, issuing warnings about supposed restrictions on personal freedoms, and often they use similar wording and have similar-sounding voiceovers. Many are styled as TV news reports, with at least one using a fake clip of a news presenter which was almost certainly created with AI.

The videos have appeared on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Threads and YouTube. While we can’t say for sure where the videos originated, many appearing on different platforms have displayed a TikTok account handle at the end.

Our investigation identified 14 different TikTok accounts which had been involved in sharing the videos. After we contacted the social media platform, it told us last week that all 14 accounts had been banned for breaching its rules which do not allow “misinformation that could cause significant harm to individuals or society”.

However we are continuing to find more accounts sharing similar false or unevidenced claims—some as recently as this week.

What the videos claimed

The first such video we spotted claimed that the government was introducing a new system called “enhanced customs monitoring” from 4 August, which would supposedly flag if UK residents leave the country more than three times a year, so their declared income, employment status and tax residency could be checked.

The video claimed that on someone’s fourth trip abroad, an automatic alert would be sent to the “mobility oversight unit”, said to be a new body operating under HMRC and the Home Office, which would check whether people’s “declared income, employment status and tax residency match [their] lifestyle”.

But these claims are completely false, and when we spoke to HMRC, it confirmed that no such system exists.

Over the past two months, we’ve seen a series of similar videos making false or unevidenced claims, including that:

• Purchases over £1,000 will be automatically reported to HMRC from 2026
• The government is imposing restrictions on essential grocery items
• Banks will have to report cash withdrawals over £420 to an anti-fraud unit
• A UK council will fine people £5 for sitting too long on a public bench
• Operating a vehicle without a valid licence will no longer lead to criminal proceedings

Our investigation identified at least 47 examples of such claims being posted across different platforms, with 313,666 shares in total. But this is based only on a limited analysis of a sample of the claims, and is likely to significantly understate the true extent of the claims’ spread.

TikTok takes down accounts

Many of the videos published across different platforms appear to have been previously posted on TikTok, with a number of different TikTok handles displayed in the footage.

And while we haven’t been able to confirm who first created the videos, we did identify at least 14 TikTok accounts which had shared them. Many of these accounts supposedly focused on UK news, with names like ‘Quick.news.uk’, ‘Uk.news.info’ and ‘Ukinfo5’.

These accounts had in excess of 10,000 followers, and some of the most popular videos had been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

We can’t be sure why these videos were created, or why they were originally shared. We’ve attempted to contact several of the TikTok accounts to ask if they knew they were sharing false content, but haven’t been able to reach them.

Social media platforms’ creator programmes, which reward users for driving engagement online, have been linked in the past to a rise in so-called ‘rage bait’—content which is designed to anger and outrage.

According to TikTok, creators can make money on the platform via the Creator Rewards Program if they have at least 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 video views in the last 30 days, which many of the accounts posting these videos had. (There is also some further eligibility criteria around location, a lack of terms violations and account type).

However, it’s not clear if the accounts we identified were monetising the videos, or were part of the Creator Rewards Program at all—TikTok did not clarify this when we asked. And it’s possible that at least some of the claims, though false, may have been shared in good faith.

In some cases, we’ve also seen claims first made in the videos repeated elsewhere on social media in an entirely different form, for example as a new video or a text post.

TikTok says to make money on its platform, accounts must post “original content” and videos that are at least one minute long, and “have a TikTok account in good standing, including no history of repeatedly or irresponsibly violating our Community Guidelines and Terms of Service policies and engaging in malicious or fraudulent activities”.

Many of the videos we saw included disclaimers such as: “This video presents a personal perspective and is intended for discussion. It is not intended to assert facts, but to encourage reflection and debate. We encourage everyone to check the information for themselves and form their own opinions.” It’s possible this could have been included in an attempt to prevent the accounts being flagged by the platform.

After we contacted TikTok last week, it took down all the accounts we asked it about.

A spokesperson told Full Fact: “As per our Community Guidelines, we do not allow misinformation that could cause significant harm to individuals or society. We have banned all of the flagged accounts for breaching these rules.”

TikTok said the disclaimers added to some of the videos we saw circulating would not impact its enforcement decisions “in instances where content still contains false and dangerous misinformation or deceptive AI Generated Content (eg, AIGC presenting false information to be from an authoritative source)”.

The social media giant added: “Our Community Guidelines are clear we do not allow misinformation that may cause significant harm to individuals or society, regardless of intent.

“In addition, as set out in our Community Guidelines, all realistic AI-generated content must be clearly labelled using our AIGC label. In addition, we do not allow harmful or misleading AI-generated content on our platform. Any such content will be removed, regardless of whether it has been labelled.”

However, since we contacted TikTok last week we have continued to find accounts posting false or unevidenced claims about personal freedoms, with new videos making claims similar to those we have fact checked published this week.

Since July we have also spotted a number of these videos—many apparently reposted from TikTok—on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, which are owned by Meta. We rated these Meta posts as part of our work with the company’s Third-Party Fact Checking Programme.

We contacted Meta, YouTube and X about the videos appearing on their platforms. YouTube referred us to its Community Guidelines, which say “YouTube does not allow misleading or deceptive content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm”. X referred us to its Community Notes programme, which allows contributors to write notes under posts they believe to be misleading, with other users voting on which to display.