English Football Demands Action on increasing online abuse

February 19, 2021 

English football has reached a breaking point with players, coaches, referees and officials horrified by the increasing levels of hate aimed at them on Facebook-owned Instagram and Twitter.

In recent weeks, racism has been targeted online at Manchester United players Marcus Rashford, Axel Tuanzebe, Anthony Martial and Lauren James as well as counterparts from other clubs. High profile Premier League referee, Mike Dean, went to the police to report on death threats sent to family social media accounts following red cards he showed to players in matches.

The growing outrage over the proliferation of viciously abusive and racist language, threats of physical harm, sexist slurs and the lack of real action to close down the offending social media accounts, led to demands for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey to take action. 

The Premier League, the English Football League, FA, WSL, Women’s Championship, PFA, LMA, PGMOL and football anti-discriminatory organisation, Kick it Out all signed a letter last week asking the social media heads to show “basic human decency” by taking more robust action to eradicate racism and for users’ identities to be verified, including steps such as filtering posts for racist or discriminatory language and creating a system to identify users.

The letter from football's governing bodies stated in part: "Your inaction has created the belief in the minds of the anonymous perpetrators that they are beyond reach...The language used is debasing, often threatening and illegal. It causes distress to the recipients and the vast majority of people who abhor racism, sexism and discrimination of any kind. The targets of abuse should be offered basic protections. We ask that you accept responsibility for preventing abuse from appearing on your platforms and go further than you have promised to do to date."

Read the letter here. 

Instagram announced new measures, including the removal of accounts to prevent abusive messages on its platform and developing new controls to help reduce the abuse people see. “We don’t want hate and racism on our platforms and remove it when we find it,” a Facebook spokesman said. 

“There is no room for racist abuse on Twitter,” a spokesman for the platform said. “We will continue to take swift action on the minority that try to undermine the conversation for the majority.” 

Football authorities' requests to Facebook and Twitter include:

• Messages and posts should be filtered and blocked before being sent or posted if they contain racist or discriminatory material 
• You should operate robust, transparent, and swift measures to take down abusive material if it does get into circulation 
• All users should be subject to an improved verification process that (only if required by law enforcement) allows for accurate identification of the person behind the account. Steps should also be taken to stop a user that has sent abuse previously from re-registering an account 
• Your platforms should actively and expeditiously assist the investigating authorities in identifying the originators of illegal discriminatory material 

“This is us taking a stand against racism," said Aston Villa defender Neil Taylor, who is trying to encourage more fellow British Asians into the sport. “I don’t think we’ll ever fully eradicate it, but we’re now trying to create a society which calls people out on it.”

Article content from AP News and KSTP ABC 5.