BARTLEY BACKS A SOCIAL MEDIA BOYCOTT TO TACKLE RACISM

MARVIN BARTLEY has thrown his weight behind Phil Neville’s call for the football industry to boycott social media until the likes of Twitter lay out a clear plan to tackle online abuse and establish a rigorous policy geared towards identifying the perpetrators. The former Hibernian midfielder was targeted on the grounds of his skin colour in a vile tweet during his time at Easter Road in 2017, with a man also being arrested earlier this year for allegedly making racial comments during a stormy Edinburgh derby at Tynecastle after a video had appeared on Snapchat. With Manchester United’s Paul Pogba, Tammy Abraham of Chelsea and Yakou Meite of Bartley’s hometown club Reading all the subject of racist abuse on the internet of late, the issue has caught fire. And in addition to backing demands from England women’s coach Neville for a blanket ban, Bartley, now at Livingston, wants to see Twitter, in particular, bring in stringent identification checks rather than allowing accounts to be opened with nothing more than a random email address. ‘Even right now, people are doing these things and, if investigations do get to the bottom of it, they lose their jobs,’ said Bartley. ‘Then, it is not so funny sending racist tweets to players. ‘Going down that road is how you crack down. If you can’t pay your bills because of a Tweet, you have a problem. It changes the whole thing. ‘If a kid wants to open a Twitter account, for example, their parent should have to provide some kind of photo ID. Do the likes of Twitter want to do that, though? We’ll see. ‘Twitter, probably, don’t want this problem, but they might well be getting more and more accounts on the back of it. What Phil Neville said probably is the best way to deal with it. Don’t go on it. ‘If you hate me and tweet me, but I don’t go on Twitter, what purpose does it serve? It stops. The biggest thing in terms of racism towards sportspeople, especially, is social media. ‘I could set up an Instagram or Twitter account, abuse someone playing in Australia, delete it and there are no repercussions. It is so easy. No one knows who or where I am. It’s crazy. ‘People send these messages because they can get at sportspeople they’d never be able to talk to otherwise. Twenty years ago, you’d have to go up to them and say it. ‘And you know what? If you want to be racist towards me, I’d probably have more respect for you if you did come and say it to my face.’ Bartley has learned to turn the other cheek, but admits abusive incidents have been hard for his family to deal with. ‘It is how these things affect them that annoys me most,’ he said. ‘Sure, it is extremely hurtful when you see these things at first. Someone hates me this much because of something I can’t change — the colour of my skin. ‘But the best way to react is not to let it hurt you because, then, they have won. It would eat you up inside if you carried a grudge.’