#No2ULEZ — How a Policy to Fight Climate Change in London Became a Hated Target

ULEZ — the Ultra Low Emission Zone — is an area in London where a fee is charged for driving the most polluting vehicles, introduced by Mayor Sadiq Khan on April 8, 2019. In August 2023, the zone was extended to cover all of Greater London, making it one of the largest clean air zones in the world. The policy is controversial: not everyone is happy about it — old car owners, car dealers, and others have organized online campaigns to oppose it. But the Anti-ULEZ campaign exhibits patterns that go beyond legitimate civic opposition. Using Information Tracer, we investigated coordinated activity across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit — collecting the top 500 most-interacted posts per platform. The campaign gained significant traction in early 2023, and the cross-platform behavior indicates its scale and impact may be bigger than people realize.

On Facebook, the campaign evolved dramatically between January and March 2023: an explosion of groups with suspiciously similar names appeared — 'Action against ULEZ extension,' 'Action Against Unfair ULEZ CAZ & LTN,' 'London against ULEZ,' 'Bromley ULEZ & Local Action Group.' Before 2023, only a few Facebook groups were involved, mostly Conservative members. On Twitter, new accounts began spreading anti-ULEZ messages at scale between March and August 2023. Information Tracer flagged that the average posts per user was higher than baseline across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — an indication of message amplification rather than organic conversation. To identify potential bot accounts, we extracted the 10% of users posting most frequently. Characteristics: many identified as conservatives and support the Conservative Party; some expressed skepticism toward mainstream media and government; several had recently created accounts. One standout: @AntiExtension, the most active anti-ULEZ Twitter account, was created in March 2023. @MarkDav19158616 was created in February 2023, with a bio reading 'Climate Crisis is a LIE. Unvaccinated, Untested, Unmasked, Unafraid.'

We discovered three anti-ULEZ campaign websites frequently shared on social media: anti-ulez.com (registered February 2023), truthaboutulez.co.uk (registered March 2023), and stopulez.net (registered June 2023). Two of the three — anti-ulez.com and truthaboutulez.co.uk — are hosted on the same IP address (76.223.105.230), a strong indicator of coordination by the same operator. Sentiment analysis using Information Tracer's network graph showed the majority of users were negative toward 'ULEZ' and 'Sadiq Khan' while positive toward the 'Stop ULEZ Campaign' — and the sentiment was highly unified, suggesting politically motivated coordination rather than organic diverse opinion. Anti-ULEZ Twitter accounts also co-shared the hashtag #voteconservative and exhibited links to extreme views including anti-vaccine and anti-climate positions.

“Information Tracer investigated the #No2ULEZ campaign and found coordinated inauthentic behavior not just on Twitter, bu…”

In the end, the Anti-ULEZ campaign has a combination of genuine users and inauthentic actors. The net effect: the campaign message gets amplified far beyond where it would reach organically. Key unanswered questions remain: Who is operating the bot accounts? Where does the funding come from? The Valent Projects report estimated operating costs at £168,000. Until journalists dig further, we don't have a complete answer. This analysis demonstrates Information Tracer's approach to complex multi-platform coordinated campaigns — tracking not just who is saying what, but how organic and inauthentic actors interact to manufacture the appearance of broader consensus. This is a repost from the Information Tracer Blog by Zhouhan Chen.