Facebook, Twitter criticized after England soccer players face racism
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UK politicians slammed Facebook and Twitter for not doing enough to combat hate speech on their platforms — in wake of racial abuse against members of England’s national team over their Euros loss Sunday.
Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, all of whom are black, were the target of racist comments on major social media platforms after England lost the Euros final Sunday to Italy.
The three players missed penalty shots in the heartbreaking 3-2 shootout loss.
British Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden denounced the online hatred, tweeting Monday, “I share the anger at appalling racist abuse of our heroic players.”
He pointed to proposed legislation, known as the Online Safety Bill, which would give a government agency the power to fine companies up to nearly $25 million, or 10 percent of their yearly revenue, for allowing content that breaches harm-prevention guidelines.
“Social media companies need to up their game in addressing it and, if they fail to, our new Online Safety Bill will hold them to account with fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue.”
Another UK politician, Damian Collins, noted Facebook’s terms of service prohibit hate speech and asked how many accounts the tech giant had deleted.
A representative for Facebook did not immediately return The Post’s request for comment.
A Twitter spokesperson said that in the past 24 hours, the company has “swiftly removed over 1000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules – the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology.”
“The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter,” the spokesperson said.
The Football Association governing body also condemned the abuse, saying Sunday evening in a statement that it was “appalled by the online racism that has been aimed at some of our England players on social media.”
“We could not be clearer that anyone behind such disgusting behaviour is not welcome in following the team,” the association said. “We will do all we can to support the players affected while urging the toughest punishments possible for anyone responsible.”
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