Social media platforms Twitter and Facebook have pledged to fight racist abuse targeted at black players of the English national team after the Euro 2020 final.
The comments by social media users were condemned by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and the football association.
Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka, and Jadon Sancho were targets of racial slurs by disapproving fans after the England national team lost to Italy in a penalty shootout.
England Manager, Gareth Southgate, in his remarks said, “It’s just not what we stand for.
READ ALSO: TCN Will Be Reformed Not Privatised – BPE
“We have been a beacon of light in bringing people together, in people being able to relate to the national team, and the national team stands for everybody and so that togetherness has to continue.
“We have shown the power our country has when it does come together and has that energy and positivity together.”
Twitter’s spokesperson said that the platform had taken down more than 1,000 tweets in the past 24 hours.
Twitter said, “The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter.
“In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning-based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1,000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules — the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology. “
Facebook, on its part, said that it had “quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers last night and we’ll continue to take action against those that break our rules”.
“No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we’re committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.”
