(REUTERS): English football bodies have penned down a letter to Facebook and Twitter demanding action amid increased levels of abuse and racist content aimed at footballers and officials on social media.
The Premier League, FA, EFL, WSL, Women’s Championship, PFA, LMA, PGMOL and Kick It Out have all co-signed the letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook founder, chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerburg, asking them “for reasons of basic human decency” to use the power of their systems to end the abuse.
“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. We have had many meetings with your executives over the years but the reality is your platforms remain havens for abuse,” the letter reads.
The letter expresses dissatisfaction against social media platforms’ course of action in combating hate speech and online discriminatory messages on feeds. The football bodies have requested Facebook and Twitter to make the following amendments:
Messages and posts should be filtered and blocked before being sent or posted if they contain racist or discriminatory material. Swift measures need to be made to take down abusive content before it further gets circulated.
All users should be subject to an improved verification process that 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.
High-profile players in both the men’s and women’s game have been victims of racist abuse on social media, while Premier League referee Mike Dean was subjected to death threats following a controversial decision over the weekend.
