Social media companies have been accused of “taking their eye off the ball” over online death threats against public servants such as Prof Chris Whitty after he became the focus of violent language in channels set up by anti-lockdown activists and members of the far right. Calls came for England’s chief medical officer to be given police protection this week after footage surfaced of him being harassed in the street. Whitty’s home was targeted by anti-lockdown protesters, while he and other senior government figures are being vilified on social media channels as “traitors”. MPs have joined pressure groups in urging tech companies to prevent hostile language in groups containing members who revile government scientists and politicians seen to support lockdowns and vaccines. The calls come in the same week as Facebook, Google, Twitter and TikTok committed to tackling the abuse of women on their platforms with a radical overhaul. One of the groups where violent language against Whitty has appeared is Guardians300, which has more than 3,600 members on the instant messaging app Telegram. The group was founded by the former British army captain Michael Stott, who has addressed anti-lockdown gatherings in person and is trying to recruit a force of “common-law constables” to outnumber the police, who he believes are acting unlawfully. The channel distributes false claims by conspiracy theorists accusing Whitty of ordering drugs to be used to kill Covid-19 patients. Others called for Whitty, Boris Johnson and the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, to be “sent to the gallows”. The Liberal Democrat MP and party spokesperson for home affairs, Alistair Carmichael, said: “Social media firms have taken their eye off the ball for years and allowed death threats and other abuse to run rampant on their platforms. Local police forces don’t have the officers or the resources to tackle it properly. More must be done to protect public figures who are the target of these threats, and those who use online platforms to incite violence must face the full force of the law.” Under one of many comments accusing government figures of “treason” and that then went on to say that it carried the death penalty, another user claiming to be a former soldier said the time would come when the police, military and veterans would have to “decide” whether their oath was to the “people or to the monarch/establishment”. Stott dissociated himself from the language used by some users of the channel. He told the Guardian he believed that “infiltrators” who could be from the British army’s psychological operations wing may be posting comments on the Guardians300 group in an effort to discredit what he said was a peaceful group. He added: “We stay true to the basic tenets of common law, you know, which is cause no harm, injury or loss, and be honourable in your contract. So that’s our basic tenet. Now, sometimes things slip through the net, but once we see them, I’ve actively deleted messages, as will the people within the admin team, but sometimes they just slip through and other people comment on them.” Examples on other anti-lockdown Telegram channels included comments such as one from a user who said of the former health secretary Matt Hancock: “I’d love to see 20 heavily armed militia go in there, neutralise the guards and hang their carcasses up on the fence.” The “Tommy Robinson News” Telegram channel, which posts in support of the far-right activist and has more than 10,000 subscribers, has also become a conduit for regular calls for the killing of Whitty and others including Hancock. Footage of anti-lockdown activists protesting recently outside an address they believed to be Whitty’s home was shared on the channel with users calling for him to “dragged out” and “strung up”. The latest incident involving Whitty being abused in public comes after other footage showed an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist abusing the deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam, and following him into the reception of the Ministry of Defence. The shadow secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, Jo Stevens, said: “Online hatred which has been allowed to spread unchecked for so long has real world consequences. Labour wants criminal sanctions for tech executives who oversee repeated breaches of a robust code of conduct.” Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which monitors hate speech and has compiled a dossier on death threats made across a range of platforms, said: “By continuing to host organised groups like this, big tech is once again actively enabling both vile abuse of Prof Whitty as an individual and also helping to undermine faith in our collective institutions. “These aren’t harmless words online. Both the US Capitol invasion and the rise in hesitancy for the Covid vaccine worldwide shows that when messages like these are given oxygen, it normalises dangerous fringe views among real people – some of whom mobilise into real-world action.” “Now that they know, Telegram needs to act immediately to remove these channels and ban the key figures involved.” The Guardian has asked for a response from Telegram, which has emerged as the social media platform of choice not just for the far right, but for the most extreme end of the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine movement. The relative ease with which users can sign up, and a commitment to privacy, continues to be an attraction.