Boycott may help convince social sites of need for better policing

The announcement Rangers players and management were boycotting social media for a week from Thursday was a welcome display of conviction when others, including UEFA, have proved sadly lacking.

The action seemed designed to coincide with Slavia Prague playing in London against Arsenal in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final tie.

It was uncomfortable viewing watching the Czech Republic team’s players and staff celebrating a late equaliser after some of the comments to emerge from the club since Glen Kamara, pictured inset, was racially abused by their midfielder Ondrej Kudela in last month’s clash with Rangers.

On reflection, it might have been more effective had the Ibrox club simply stopped all forms of communication across social media.

However, it quickly became apparent yesterday that their own official site would be tweeting to relay news from their pre-match press conferences as normal.

What would certainly have considerably more impact are other clubs joining in with this social media blackout.

Rangers’ Premiership rivals were all admirably quick to lend their support in the days after the appalling abuse directed at Kamara, from Kudela in the first instance and then across social media.

They stood in support then – literally so, with many clubs abandoning taking a knee before games in a bid to reset the Black Lives Matters message.

Players and management from other clubs, at all levels, uniting to boycott Twitter, Facebook and other platforms might help convince social media companies of the need for their sites to be far better policed than is clearly the case at present.