English Football Bodies Ask Facebook And Twitter To Tackle Online Abuse
A number of English football’s major bodies have sent an open letter to both Facebook and Twitter, highlighting increased levels of abuse aimed at footballers in recent months.
The heads of each of The FA, Premier League, EFL, WSL, Women’s Championship, PFA, LMA, PGMOL and Kick It Out have all co-signed a letter addressed to Jack Dorsey, CEO, Twitter and Mark Zuckerburg, CEO, Facebook, highlighting the abuse and calling for action.
The letter asks that, ‘for reasons of basic human decency, you use the power of your global systems to bring this to an end’.
The organisations have asked that the social media companies filter and block posts containing ‘racist or discriminatory material’ before they are sent, as well as ensuring such posts are taken down swiftly if they are published.
The bodies also say that users should be subject to an improved verification process, while the platforms themselves should actively assist the authorities investigating illegal discriminatory posts.
The open letter states: “The services you provide are of course hugely impressive in their reach, scale and ease of use. Billions of communications every day are enabled by them, but a minority has found protected spaces where they can say whatever they want without regard to the law.
“We ask you to accept that none of your users should be hounded off your platforms, losing access to the great communications media of our times, because of their gender or the colour of their skin. The targets of abuse should be offered basic protections, and 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.
“Players, match officials, managers and coaches of any origin and background and at any level of football should be able to participate in the game without having to endure illegal abuse. We, the leaders of the game in English football, will do everything we can to protect them, but we cannot succeed until you change the ability of offenders to remain anonymous.”
In recent weeks, footballers including Manchester United’s Axel Tuanzebe, Marcus Rashford and Lauren James have received abuse, as well as James’s brother and Chelsea player Reece James (pictured above. Referee Mike Dean has also had abuse aimed at him online.
