Social media giants refuse to change policies on racist trolls despite alarming rise in football abuse and boycott
TWO SOCIAL MEDIA giants are ignoring the planned boycott of their sites by football – and refusing to change their policies on trolls and racists.
Prem players, managers, clubs and officials will join with the FA, EFL and the women’s game in a three-day social media blackout from Friday afternoon.
The game is uniting to urge the social media companies to act against online hate.
But Facebook, which owns Instagram, said it was sticking with its existing rules rather than acting to introduce new safeguards.
That was despite another weekend of unacceptable social media postings, which saw Manchester City and England full-back Kyle Walker targeted for racial abuse.
Furious Walker, who posted a screengrab of the latest message, captioned his post by tagging Instagram and asking: “When is this going to stop?”
But a Facebook spokesman declined to promise extra action or even a change in policy.
Instead, the company said: “We don’t want discriminatory abuse on Instagram or Facebook.
“We share the goal of tackling it and holding people who share it accountable.
“We do this by taking action on content and accounts that break our rules and cooperating with law enforcement when we receive a valid legal request.
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“Over the past three months we have announced tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMs and new tools which, when turned on, will mean people never have to see abusive messages again.
“We’re committed to fighting hate and racism on our platform, but we also know these problems are bigger than us, so we look forward to continuing our work with industry partners to tackle the issue – both on and offline.”
That stance is unlikely to find favour with football chiefs, who have the backing of Government plans to draft new and tougher legislation to make the companies legally and financially responsible for comments on their networks.
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