I don’t think the BLM thread covers this topic, even if there’s some crossover.
Just this week Eddie Nketiah, Granit Xhaka and now Willian have been on the end of racial abuse.
James McClean has also spoken up about the abuse he’s receiving on a daily.
People just have a different level of bravery behind a keyboard and they always will. I don’t think there’s any easily solution to this because I don’t foresee major social media companies every being trusted in a global scale to hold peoples personal information and keep it safe and anonymous.
Football collectively (ie players, coaches & media etc) tend to latch onto some issue/campaign where they come off as the perpetual victims. They’re always trying to paint the image of them in a positive/innocent light to hide the ugly aspects of the game.
It’s funny, you can scream all kinds of foul/racial abuse in football grounds that would violate twitter’s terms of service but no one bats an eye lid in person.
I hate online abuse, I am a strong believer in the idea your behavior and conduct online your reflect you irl. The insta online abuse issue seems simple enough to me. Just don’t allow other users who you don’t follow to have the ability to message you directly.
Twitter is too big to consistently police. The suggestion of ID verification for users is extremely harmful to their business model and creates data protection problem across hundreds of different territories. Anyway, this would be a “quick fix” to the issue as the bigger problem is with society and the trolls who use the online space to act like cunts for attention.
Why don’t these footballers just leave the platform if they’re unsatisfied with its inability to prevent online abuse from reaching their eyes? Or make your own platform where ID required
I can’t see why a footballer should leave a platform that’s imperative to maintaining their own presence, building marketability and connecting with fans because racist people can’t stop being racist.
The onus is absolutely on social media companies to do a better job policing their platforms.
Imperative is a bit strong, there are plenty of ways to engage with fans or market your brand without social media or through a personal account.
Twitter relies heavily on prominent organizations/people actively using their platform to enhance their own business as that a driver interactions. Voting with your feet and taking your custom elsewhere is an effective tool to get the experience you desire or to forces change. I’d like to see every football club, player & sports media left Twitter permanently in protest if they’re really serious about the issue.
Then again it’s not reasonable, practical or fair to expect Twitter to police hundreds of thousands of interaction coming in per second without creating restrictive and expensive measures that would kill their business model. I think the issue of online abuse is a lot hard to moderate when you’re dealing with millions of people
It seems simple enough to me if you don’t want to see racist abuse directed to you online then leave the platform or make your own and see if it’s profitable. There isn’t much you can do to prevent racism irl or online without addressing the wider problem in society.
I used to think like this but now I agree with @SRCJJ but for different reasons, I don’t care about the marketability and presence. I don’t think its right you have to stop using a service because someone else makes it an inhospitable experience for you. Don’t think it’s particularly fair or just.
People shoudn’t take these kind of comments seriously imo.
Subhumans who failed to evolve.
Although… I’m sorry and I shouldn’t, but the comment made to Bellerin made me laugh… 
No, but it is reasonable to expect them to act when alerted to abuse.
I’ve seen many people posting screenshots of replies they have received after flagging racist or abusive posts. To be fair it’s mainly Instagram, but have seen some Twitter responses too. Things like calling someone a monkey – seen replies from Instagram saying this doesn’t break their rules as there isn’t proof it’s racism.
So even if it’s hard to police everyone, the social media platforms can definitely do more.
Doesn’t twitter allow you to block comments and retweets and also allow you to only be tagged into things by certain people etc etc?
Yes, and a lot of people do do that – so only people they follow can reply to them.
But in some cases, it’s their relatives getting the abuse. In McClean’s case, his wife was getting threats as well.
Sometimes people respond to the actual club’s tweets too with abusive/racist comments about certain players.
For as long as there is anonymity this shit will continue, people are far less inclined to pull this kind of crap when they have to do it under their real identities. We are tracked online through everything we do, these companies already have most of their users personal information, so the idea that they might misuse that information is a moot point for me as they already have it. Only solution is to force people to sign up using a form of identification, for those already signed up set a time limit and ask them to verify their accounts by using either a passport or driver’s license, then give everyone a blue tick. I bet this kind of vile abuse will drop significantly.
Can’t say that I agree. You’re being extremely reductive with the reporting abuse processes and the algorithm involved.
Twitter is not an easy platform to moderate, even when they’re alerted to abuse. If it was we wouldn’t be having this discussion and the issue of online abuse wouldn’t be universal all over the online space.
I believe that all social media should be shut it’s clearly evident that the majority arnt ready to use it properly and just want it to spread hate or misinformation (in the case of covid).
Until these social media companies can self police their own platforms I am pretty sure they can a piece of software that can flag abusive comments that can be reviewed untill it can be seen online.
Lesbian model twitter is one hell of a drug.
If you require user ID on social media, then there will be no more racism online.
Just look at Willian’s favourite anti-racist activist, Jair Bolsonaro.
You’re always going to have absolute knobs on Social media, not sure we have anyway we can avoid it. Hopefully the players just ignore it and don’t give these fuckwits the attention they crave.
I don’t think anyone hiding behind an anonymous account is craving attention though and that’s the issue. The problem has to be tackled and not ignored in some way at least.
I don’t think it ever goes away but social media platforms could and should do more.
Apart from banning the accounts and any IP addresses can they do much more ? Genuine question, I’m not tech savvy mate.
