Abuse towards footballers online

rob316

The PFA get together and players suspend all their accounts, lets see how long it takes for these companies to respond.

They can ask you for your passport/ID to gain access to your account if you've been locked out, it should be easy to do the same for account creation.

I've lost sympathy for the players to be honest, they have plenty of power but take the dollar instead.

CSF

rob316 wrote: »

The PFA get together and players suspend all their accounts, lets see how long it takes for these companies to respond.

They can ask you for your passport/ID to gain access to your account if you've been locked out, it should be easy to do the same for account creation.

I've lost sympathy for the players to be honest, they have plenty of power but take the dollar instead.

I keep asking the same questions and nobody seem to answer it and yet carry on with the same point.

Dave0301

but1er wrote: »

I'm out of sympathy for these footballers. One solutions stops this very quickly.

Change your privacy settings on Instagram that only people you follow can comment message and interact with you. That stops it all very quickly. Stops given them a platform and they will get bored and move on

I suppose women shouldn't wear revealing clothes on a night out either?

startrek56

surely in this day and age, if instagram and twitter and facebook and the likes wanted to ban certain words they could easily...

like if you sent someone a message calling them N***er if would just be automatically deleted??

rob316

CSF wrote: »

I keep asking the same questions and nobody seem to answer it and yet carry on with the same point.

That's why I keep saying the taking the knee is absolute bollox and empty. Players and clubs want to tackle this properly, they have the power and influence to.

Stop cry arsing about it while generating millions from the very platforms facilitating the abuse.

Suspend your accounts or STFU to be honest.

rob316

100m followers LFC have between Instagram, FB and Twitter.

Suspend the accounts, get another couple clubs to follow and the players and you'll see real change in the accountability of these companies.

CSF

So people just want zero anonymity online to fix this issue, and aren’t too worried about the potentially much bigger issues that doing so should cause?

I repeat, if we take this so seriously (which I believe we should) we should be looking at making this a punished hate crime.

Tchaikovsky

blueser wrote: »

SSN reporting that Keita and TAA were sent monkey emojis on IG after last night's game. What the hell is wrong with people? Yes, they had poor games. It happens. It doesn't give "fans" the right to make idiotic remarks about them. Hope the culprits are caught, but what will happen to them? Their accounts will be suspended, and they'll just open a new one.

I think if black players just stopped making mistakes or scoring in games, it wouldn't trigger these window lickers. Also, Instagram should get rid of that ****ing monkey emoji

event

CSF wrote: »

How do they do that without making every comment about every topic on social media traceable?

That’s not a small thing. Things like workplace rights abuses, whistleblowing, people living in parts of the world who are subject to oppression. None of that would be able to be spoken about, without fear of being identified by the very people being spoken about.

That’s a very big price to pay, simply to avoid society having to treat hate crimes like an actual legitimate crime worth punishing

To create a social media account you have to provide proof of ID, like setting up a gambling account. Passport, drivers license etc

A social media account is not something people are entitled to.

And SM companies dont give a boll!x about whistleblowers etc. They care about money and thats the real reason they wont do this. Cos they want the clicks etc.

CSF wrote: »

I repeat, if we take this so seriously (which I believe we should) we should be looking at making this a punished hate crime.

Agree. But how do you deal with jurisdictional issues? Someone in mexico comments on an english players account, how do you prosecute them?

CSF

event wrote: »

To create a social media account you have to provide proof of ID, like setting up a gambling account. Passport, drivers license etc

A social media account is not something people are entitled to.

And SM companies dont give a boll!x about whistleblowers etc. They care about money and thats the real reason they wont do this. Cos they want the clicks etc.



Agree. But how do you deal with jurisdictional issues? Someone in mexico comments on an english players account, how do you prosecute them?

I wasn’t suggesting for a second that social media companies care about the legitimate reasons for anonymity online. Merely pointing out that they do exist and are bigger than this (although I do think this is big also).

In terms of jurisdictional issues, I agree with you, it’s pretty difficult to enforce the situation you proposed. But that’s no good reason for individual countries to avoid dealing with the issue in terms of their enforcement of hate crimes.

In the Ian Wright case, it was an Irish lad, prosecuted in an Irish court, judge had the opportunity to make an example of him, Ian Wright wanted him to be punished for it.

Instead, all the usual ‘good family’ ‘made an uncharacteristic mistake’ stuff was trotted out and the lad doesn’t even have a criminal record.

event

Yep. So going after them legally, unfortunately, isnt a deterrent. But the knowledge that companies will know exactly who they are might be.
Its extreme, I know that. But I honestly dont see any other way around it. But it'll never happen anyway.

Ireland is a disgrace for sentencing anyway but thats a whole other issue. We have people giving a rapist character references ffs, saying he's a good lad etc.

CSF

event wrote: »

Yep. So going after them legally, unfortunately, isnt a deterrent. But the knowledge that companies will know exactly who they are might be.
Its extreme, I know that. But I honestly dont see any other way around it. But it'll never happen anyway.

Ireland is a disgrace for sentencing anyway but thats a whole other issue. We have people giving a rapist character references ffs, saying he's a good lad etc.

I think that fixing that problem by giving social media companies even more personal data causes more problems than it fixes. Just think of the likes of Amazon, who would be only dying to know exactly which of their employees are upset online about having to p*ss in a bottle at work.

I agree with you completely that the legal system has its priorities in all the wrong places, and that’s what all these dissenting voices should be targeting instead.

Fitz*

I personally know professional footballers in Ireland who have their 'footballer' Instagram account and their 'personal' account.

The top level players are surely the same, Curtis Jones' personal account was discovered a few weeks ago. low level follower & followers numbers, Trent was one of them. But it looked like somewhere for just his close friends and family.

These trolls are more often that not writing to the 'public persona' accounts. And also sent from their own fake account. Which certainly drives up the calls for the ID verification process to stop 1) racists & 2) kids making accounts for attention. I think there a big element here where kids don't know any better and are doing this for the infamy - 'look at me, my posts got featured on SSN today'

Twitter have a feature where only people that you follow can reply to your tweets. I think this could be handy, but it does limit the capabilities of the app. Instagram has similar where only people you follow can comment on your posts. Again this limits the capabilities. Social media companies want to have as much interactions as possible, that's their remit. You can see why they want more accounts and more interactions as it drives up their revenue streams.

I can see the pros & cons of ID verification. I'm of the generation that wouldn't really mind this. Doesn't really harm me as I'm not exactly going to be posting racist stuff on any account.

Maybe they can tweak these features and implement a feature where you can only message or reply to verified accounts if you provided ID yourself? Again, this limits the social media interactions so I'm not sure how appealling this is to them.

Pussyhands

blueser wrote: »

SSN reporting that Keita and TAA were sent monkey emojis on IG after last night's game. What the hell is wrong with people? Yes, they had poor games. It happens. It doesn't give "fans" the right to make idiotic remarks about them. Hope the culprits are caught, but what will happen to them? Their accounts will be suspended, and they'll just open a new one.

Attention.

And media keep giving it to them.

Pussyhands

Fitz* wrote: »

I personally know professional footballers in Ireland who have their 'footballer' Instagram account and their 'personal' account.

The top level players are surely the same, Curtis Jones' personal account was discovered a few weeks ago. low level follower & followers numbers, Trent was one of them. But it looked like somewhere for just his close friends and family.

These trolls are more often that not writing to the 'public persona' accounts. And also sent from their own fake account. Which certainly drives up the calls for the ID verification process to stop 1) racists & 2) kids making accounts for attention. I think there a big element here where kids don't know any better and are doing this for the infamy - 'look at me, my posts got featured on SSN today'

Twitter have a feature where only people that you follow can reply to your tweets. I think this could be handy, but it does limit the capabilities of the app. Instagram has similar where only people you follow can comment on your posts. Again this limits the capabilities. Social media companies want to have as much interactions as possible, that's their remit. You can see why they want more accounts and more interactions as it drives up their revenue streams.

I can see the pros & cons of ID verification. I'm of the generation that wouldn't really mind this. Doesn't really harm me as I'm not exactly going to be posting racist stuff on any account.

Maybe they can tweak these features and implement a feature where you can only message or reply to verified accounts if you provided ID yourself? Again, this limits the social media interactions so I'm not sure how appealling this is to them.

Why do you think a footballer would have a public and personal account? It's because the public account makes them money. Limiting replies on tweets etc. doesn't drive clicks and interactions which is what makes footballers money.

Pussyhands

event wrote: »

To create a social media account you have to provide proof of ID, like setting up a gambling account. Passport, drivers license etc

Facebook data of 500m people was released just the other day and you're happy to give this data to Zuck and Dorsey?

And that's before you even get into the topic that anonymity leads to whistleblowers and outing of things that people would be fearful of attaching to their name...countries like China etc.

Richard Hillman

Giving your passport/drivers licence pics to Social Media companies to post nice pictures is Bat **** crazy. Its been driven by the likes of Sky who undoubtedly have an ulterior motive.

~Rebel~

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Giving your passport/drivers licence pics to Social Media companies to post nice pictures is Bat **** crazy. Its been driven by the likes of Sky who undoubtedly have an ulterior motive.

Think the only way any sort of authentication system could ever work is if it was an abstraction away from the social media company itself... would pretty much have to be a governmental process, where you request a unique identifier from a government agency, which is required to create your social media account. So your identity is connected to your account - but only seen by the government agency. The social media company only has the identifier, but not what that means or who it connects to.

The problem with something like this of course is that it only works in a country where you trust your government in how they police it.

CSF

~Rebel~ wrote: »

Think the only way any sort of authentication system could ever work is if it was an abstraction away from the social media company itself... would pretty much have to be a governmental process, where you request a unique identifier from a government agency, which is required to create your social media account. So your identity is connected to your account - but only seen by the government agency. The social media company only has the identifier, but not what that means or who it connects to.

The problem with something like this of course is that it only works in a country where you trust your government in how they police it.

How many governments in the world would you trust to police it?

We live in a country of relatively little violence and yet there’s still been stuff come out about the government having dossiers on dissenting voices (from various sides of the political spectrum) etc.

People have good reason to want to be able to control what information about them is available. In the world we operate, they may not get their way, but I see no good reason to hand that over willingly without protest.

~Rebel~

CSF wrote: »

How many governments in the world would you trust to police it?

We live in a country of relatively little violence and yet there’s still been stuff come out about the government having dossiers on dissenting voices (from various sides of the political spectrum) etc.

People have good reason to want to be able to control what information about them is available. In the world we operate, they may not get their way, but I see no good reason to hand that over willingly without protest.

That's why I pointed that out as the obvious problem.

My point is that the only way it could even begin to work is if the information is taken out of the social media company's hands, but the only other entity that could control it is national government, which obviously comes with its own massive problems in many countries.

In short - I don't think any of it works in reality.

CSF

~Rebel~ wrote: »

That's why I pointed that out as the obvious problem.

My point is that the only way it could even begin to work is if the information is taken out of the social media company's hands, but the only other entity that could control it is national government, which obviously comes with its own massive problems in many countries.

In short - I don't think any of it works in reality.

Agreed. I can’t think of anyone I’d trust with that responsibility.

Agent Coulson

I don't think a week will make much of a difference myself however fair play to them for trying.

Swansea City to boycott social media in fight against ‘abhorrent abuse’

Club, players and staff will not use social media for a week
Swansea demand action from Facebook and Twitter

Swansea City have announced that the club, all their players and their staff will boycott social media for a week to turn up the heat on Facebook and Twitter in the fight against online discrimination.

From 5pm on Thursday, Swansea’s first-team and academy players will not post any content on social media for seven days and the club will not post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube or TikTok. Swansea City Ladies, the club’s community trust, and senior administrative staff will join the boycott.

The Championship club has written to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, which owns Instagram, and Jack Dorsey, the chief executive of Twitter, to demand tougher punishments for those guilty of “cowardly abuse that has sadly become far too common”.

Last Friday Jamal Lowe became the third Swansea player in less than two months to be subjected to racial abuse on Instagram. South Wales police launched investigations after Yan Dhanda was abused in February and Ben Cabango in March. Dhanda accused Facebook of being “selfish” and criticised the company’s inaction........

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/apr/08/swansea-city-to-boycott-social-media-in-fight-against-abhorrent-abuse

Richard Hillman

Social media make their money off advertising and the bulk of numbers using it. Ultimately a football club is just one user, Thierry Henry is just one user.

If every pro footballer and club left social media, will it really make any difference? Its not like many of them post any interesting content.

However, if the likes of Sky Sports/Comcast (who are driving this) decide to stop using the platforms, they may make a little dent in it because they post content. But they won't because it drives interest in their product.

Agent Coulson

https://twitter.com/JHenderson/status/1380159111233474571?s=20
https://twitter.com/JHenderson/status/1380159257417547777?s=20

rob316

Good man Hendo, atleast he's trying. This is good, more realizing taking the knee is doing nothing.

~Rebel~

rob316 wrote: »

Good man Hendo, atleast he's trying. This is good, more realizing taking the knee is doing nothing.

You keep repeating this knee thing... you know this isn't what the knee thing is for, right? Like, it's got nothing to do with racism against footballers, or with social media specifically. It's just a broad act of respect and unity for the Black population in society at large from footballers.

There are different ways to do things. For big huge societal problems often symbols like this can be good to keep the issue in the public consciousness, and drive more focused efforts. The bigger 'statement' actions often pave the way for more specific actions, like what Hendo's done. There's a place for types of action that are both narrow and focused, and also broad and more symbolistic.

rob316

~Rebel~ wrote: »

You keep repeating this knee thing... you know this isn't what the knee thing is for, right? Like, it's got nothing to do with racism against footballers, or with social media specifically. It's just a broad act of respect and unity for the Black population in society at large from footballers.

It's a token gesture that has just become part of the prematch routine, its lost all impact to be honest. Players can be doing a whole lot more, if they really want to.

~Rebel~

rob316 wrote: »

It's a token gesture that has just become part of the prematch routine, its lost all impact to be honest. Players can be doing a whole lot more, if they really want to.

Of course they can. Everyone can do more about everything. That doesn't mean the bit someone does is worthless. It's the most watched league in the world, and every game has this symbol before it. No, on its own it's probably not changing any hearts and minds, but it's a little nudge in the right direction.

I'd say it's a reasonable point to make that things like that 'token' gesture making this conversation a constantly active subject in football make it a smaller transition for someone like Hendo to do what he's done here.

Small but consistent reminders of these things have been shown to lead to longer term shifts in perception and action. For example the way drink driving is seen in Ireland compared to 15 or 20 years ago. Or the way gay slurs are no longer accepted in anything like the way they were 15 or 20 years ago. There was no mass action, just a steady drip of consistent messaging.

Pussyhands

Henderson's gesture is meaningless. He didn't really think about deleting his social media for good. Not a hope that ever crossed his mind. There's too much money and PR to be made from it.

It's always the line "I'm going to use my platform to raise awareness". Come on, everyone's aware of it.

Like the knee was supposedly to raise awareness about racism?? Who wasn't aware of it? What has the result been of taking the knee?

rob316

~Rebel~ wrote: »

Of course they can. Everyone can do more about everything. That doesn't mean the bit someone does is worthless.

I'd say it's a reasonable point to make that things like that 'token' gesture - make it a smaller transition for someone like Hendo to do what he's done here.

I don't think its worthless buts its lost impact, at this stage not doing it would create more impact.

I've said it a million times, the clubs and players together have the power and influence to make a difference. You can do as many ads or viral campaigns as you want but thats not real action. Social media racism is racism, simple as.

Pussyhands

The only way to stop racism is to educate children. You won't change a racist adult into a non racist.

Let's see the footballers donate a certain % of their wage to educators on racism and see how much they really care about it then.

rob316

Anyway I'm sick of hearing about it. Clubs and players will continue to tweet or post about the abuse players suffered on the platforms that allow it.

Every club get together with the PFA and suspend your accounts. You will have a large amount of fans do the same in solidarity. Then alarms bells will ring in silicone valley and wall street.

~Rebel~

rob316 wrote: »

I don't think its worthless buts its lost impact, at this stage not doing it would create more impact.

I've said it a million times, the clubs and players together have the power and influence to make a difference. You can do as many ads or viral campaigns as you want but thats not real action. Social media racism is racism, simple as.

I mean, just the fact that yourself and others notice it enough to regularly complain about it means that it still has impact. You consciously see it. You know what its about. That's enough for what it is.

Is it enough from football at large? No, not at all. But I don't see the point in complaining about what's being done, instead of simply asking for more.

And as I said, I think without something like this bringing it into the footballing world on a weekly basis, I'm not sure you have Hendo doing something like what he's doing. Racism on social media has been around for as long as social media has been around, but things like him personally kneeling every week may well bring further action that step closer. Momentum has to start somewhere.

Strumms

If a post breaks the twitter terms of service by being racist or abusive, Twitter should delete the offending account when the post is reported and block the IP address of the individual from accessing twitter, as well as the email address from re-signing up....

Strumms

Strumms wrote: »

If a post breaks the twitter terms of service by being racist or abusive, Twitter should delete the offending account when the post is reported and block the IP address of the individual from accessing twitter, as well as the email address from re-signing up....

Absolutely. However, it'll take 2 mins for the person to set up another account if they are intent on trolling.

wadacrack

Teams boycotting social media won't do anything and its basically sending a message that racist abuse is winning . That's why I'm not a fan of teams walking off the pitch.

Their needs to be accountability for people who make comment's online and it needs to stop being highlighted by the media. Racist people have picked this up from their parents or surroundings at a young age. Its going to take education on prejudice to help with this issue. Its like sending to prison without rehabilitation which leads to a higher percentage of re-offenders. At the moment the media seem to be making it worse. Us v them mentality. The black lives matter movement created a divide

Underground

What can social media companies do, short of requiring a passport verification from each user when setting up their account? Assuming you put an age restriction in place i.e you must be 18 to use social media, then this would solve the problem of children using Twitter (a lot of the racist abuse seems to come from kids).

Even then that wouldn't stop everyone. I'm sure people are happy to post racist crap with their name and picture attached to it. Not to mention how a passport system like this would be open to all sorts of problems.

The answer is simple - set your account to private so that only people you follow / are friends with can DM you / comment on your posts. It amazes me why more public figures don't do this. "oh but I'll be disconnected from the genuine fans then". That seems an okay price to pay when the alternative is to be on the receiving end of racial abuse on a regular basis.

Yes, players shouldn't have to do this. They should be able to interact freely with fans without fear of being racially abused. But we are talking about football fans here. The culture is stuck somewhere in the 70's. Players should be able to come out as gay but they can't do that either, there's no obvious solution for players in this situation.

Amirani

Underground wrote: »

What can social media companies do, short of requiring a passport verification from each user when setting up their account? Assuming you put an age restriction in place i.e you must be 18 to use social media, then this would solve the problem of children using Twitter (a lot of the racist abuse seems to come from kids).

For those making this suggestion; would you still use Boards if your username had to be your real name, and you had to submit passport identification etc. in order to use the site?

Strumms

6 wrote: »

Absolutely. However, it'll take 2 mins for the person to set up another account if they are intent on trolling.

Totally but...Make it not worth their while , block their IP address.

Shanotheslayer

Amirani wrote: »

For those making this suggestion; would you still use Boards if your username had to be your real name, and you had to submit passport identification etc. in order to use the site?

I would once I could have people call me 'Shano' instead of my actual name.

Any comment I make on boards I would have no problem having with a conversation IRL or on a call etc.

Underground

Amirani wrote: »

For those making this suggestion; would you still use Boards if your username had to be your real name, and you had to submit passport identification etc. in order to use the site?

I would have no problem with the name requirement, I probably wouldn't bother if a passport was required though. Boards is nowhere near the racism filled cesspit that the likes of Twitter and Instagram are though, because famous figures do not frequent this site.

I suspect many would feel the same about the passport requirement, which is why the likes of Twitter will never bring it in. They don't want to be introducing barriers to getting on to their platform. As long as it's easy to re-register on Twitter and public figures continue to not set their accounts on private, we will continue to have this problem.

adaminho

Amirani wrote: »

For those making this suggestion; would you still use Boards if your username had to be your real name, and you had to submit passport identification etc. in order to use the site?

I actually lost a job for something I posted on boards a few years ago!

~Rebel~

Underground wrote: »

I would have no problem with the name requirement, I probably wouldn't bother if a passport was required though. Boards is nowhere near the racism filled cesspit that the likes of Twitter and Instagram are though, because famous figures do not frequent this site.

I suspect many would feel the same about the passport requirement, which is why the likes of Twitter will never bring it in. They don't want to be introducing barriers to getting on to their platform. As long as it's easy to re-register on Twitter and public figures continue to not set their accounts on private, we will continue to have this problem.

You'd be surprised what you see in "Current Affairs/IMHO" sometimes!
I always find it a bit funny that its listed under "Social & Fun" when its very much neither.

CSF

adaminho wrote: »

I actually lost a job for something I posted on boards a few years ago!

How did they trace it to you?

adaminho

CSF wrote: »

How did they trace it to you?

I assume through my I.P. address. There was a about 8 sacked in total nationwide for company information appearing on Boards.

MD1990

the culture in football has been so bad for so long.

Many things are excused as banter.
And people seem to think footballers are allowed to be used to take there frustations out on.

CSF

adaminho wrote: »

I assume through my I.P. address. There was a about 8 sacked in total nationwide for company information appearing on Boards.

Jesus that is rough. Is it too private a matter to ask what was said?

adaminho

CSF wrote: »

Jesus that is rough. Is it too private a matter to ask what was said?

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=53443156

CSF

adaminho wrote: »

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=53443156

Hold on a second, you got sacked from a job for saying that O2 was better than 3?

adaminho

Was working for O2 at the time. If you read through the thread I was giving generalisations of what was coming out in the near future. It was classed as "Disclosing confidential company information that maybe beneficial to a competitor"