Angry Henry quits ‘toxic’ social media
➤ Arsenal legend says racist abuse causes ‘mental torture’ ➤ Calls for Premier League and FA also to shut down accounts
Thierry Henry increased the pressure on social media giants to tackle the “mental torture” of online racist abuse yesterday as he quit all platforms in disgust.
The former Arsenal forward is the most high-profile athlete to delete Twitter, Instagram and Facebook in protest, and could be the first of many in what would amount to a boycott. Henry, who says the torrent of attacks is “too toxic to ignore”, has vowed to stay off the platforms until firm action is taken with “vigour and ferocity”.
Last night, leading anti-discrimination campaigners welcomed his principled stance, and called for Premier League clubs and the Football Association to follow suit by also deleting accounts.
In a statement, Henry, 43, attacked the inconsistencies of big tech’s failures to tackle trolling while taking apparently tougher stances on copyright infringements.
“The sheer volume of racism, bullying and resulting mental torture to individuals is too toxic to ignore,” he wrote. “There HAS to be some accountability. It is far too easy to create an account, use it to bully and harass without consequence and still remain anonymous.”
His pledge to shut his social media channels from today came a month after English football’s governing bodies united in telling Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter chief Jack Dorsey to show “basic human decency”.
Henry, most recently manager of Major League Soccer club Montreal Impact, is demanding more “accountability”.
“From tomorrow morning, I will be removing myself from social media until the people in power are able to regulate their platforms with the same vigour and ferocity that they currently do when you infringe copyright,” he wrote.
Accounts showing illegal Premier League football streams are often disrupted within seconds of being published, yet social media firms have been unable to stop the likes of Patrick van Aanholt, Kemar Roofe, Rhian Brewster and Willian being subjected to racist trolling.
Henry added: “Until this changes, I will be disabling my accounts across all social platforms. I’m hoping this happens soon.”
Last night Piara Powar, the executive director of European football’s equality body Fare, said he wanted to see clubs and governing bodies
now consider whether it was appropriate to share material on the sites.
He said: “Thierry Henry will be seen as someone who has done the right thing, but on his own or with a few players it’s not enough. The platforms will weather the bad publicity and move on. If you have content that brings engagement then you should ask if it is worthy of the platform you are entrusting it to.”
Henry has more than 10million Facebook followers, in addition to 2.3million on Twitter and 2.7million on Instagram.
His actions come after Edleen John, the FA’S equality and diversity director, has suggested she wonders how social media companies were able to sleep at night.
Jude Bellingham – the 17-year-old who played for England against San Marino on Thursday – had recently highlighted racist abuse he had received on Instagram after Borussia Dortmund’s 2-2 draw with Cologne.
Yesterday Facebook stated that “we don’t want discriminatory abuse on Instagram and we remove it when we find it”.
“Between October and December last year we took action on 6.6million pieces of hate speech content on Instagram, 95 per cent of which we found before anyone reported it to us,” a spokesman added to Sky Sports.
However, social media firms are yet to deliver on demands last month from English football’s main power brokers for reform.
Last month the governing bodies called on Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, and Twitter chief executive Dorsey to improve verification processes and to introduce new filters against racist abuse.