Fulham defender Cyrus Christie has no faith in the “useless” support offered by social media companies over racist abuse – revealing someone had started a online poll to have him lynched following an own goal for the Republic of Ireland.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said new internet regulator Ofcom “will have teeth” to ensure social media companies follow its new duty of care rules.
Christie has little confidence in the current system aimed at dealing with online trolls.
“I had a thing with 15 posts on Instagram and five comments minimum were racist – 15 posts straight, and I am posting once a week on average so that is a couple of months.
“You can just understand why players just don’t bother. They (social media companies) don’t understand as well because they are not in that position.
“I had the whole thing (after the Denmark game) with a guy who done a petition to have me lynched. His name was there as well and they did nothing about it.
“I sat there for two hours trying to explain to them and they were like ‘we don’t understand how this could happen, I don’t think people aren’t that racist’.”
Twitter maintains direct action continues to be taken against accounts which post abusive material.
“We have clear abusive behaviour and hateful conduct policies in place and we take enforcement of these policies very seriously. We take decisive and swift action on accounts that break our rules,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement to the PA news agency.
“Throughout this football season in the UK, we have suspended 200 accounts and taken action on nearly 4,000 examples of abuse and hateful content.
“We are continuing to proactively engage and collaborate with our valued partners in football to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively.
“We want to reiterate that abusive and hateful conduct has no place on our service and will continue to take swift action on the minority that try to undermine the conversation for the majority.”
:: Listen to the latest Counter Attack podcast – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZpxp1FfbA
