Play hardball on trolls

Bulldogs: Don’t let Facebook off hook

WESTERN Bulldogs president Peter Gordon says the AFL shouldn’t consider a potential broadcast deal with Facebook until it takes greater responsibility for what it publishes.

Gordon yesterday hit out at the social media giant after Collingwood’s Travis Varcoe admitted he considered refusing to play when recent vile posts on the platform left his wife “heartbroken”.

Gordon’s comments come only weeks after chief executive Gillon McLachlan led an AFL delegation to the US to discuss, among other things, the next broadcast rights deal with Facebook, Amazon and Google.

“If you pose the question, ‘What more can the AFL now do to support the cause against racism and to support people like Travis Varcoe … they can say to Facebook: We’re not going to put up with this and if you want to deal with us commercially then you need to change your behaviour and change your standards … and drop this crap of ‘We’re just a platform’, which they’ve gotten away with for too long’,” Gordon told ABC radio.

“The likes of Google and Facebook get special protection under the law in relation to the publication of misleading, deceptive, dishonest and defamatory conduct.

“Without Facebook these racist trolls would just be sad little men sitting in their mum’s loungerooms, because they couldn’t get an apartment of their own, keeping their views to themselves.”

News Corp has learned the AFL’s recent trip to the US wasn’t exclusively broadcast related, with talks also revolving around identifying trolls and maximising the use of the platforms.

The AFL’s head of growth digital and audience, Darren Birch, and social policy general manager Tanya Hosch have also been working with Facebook in Australia to name and shame offenders and more efficiently remove abusive material.

It’s understood the league remains a long way off securing any sort of broadcast arrangement, but the current rights deal involving Channel 7, Foxtel and Telstra doesn’t expire until 2022.

Varcoe broke his silence on the 7.30 Report as the latest player to cop abuse online.

“When you sign up for this job, you’ve got to grow a thick skin. But not everyone is built like that and to see someone that you love and care about a lot get so affected by it, that’s when it starts to break me down inside,” Varcoe said, fearful his two children, aged 15 and five, will one day discover similar racist posts.

“One of my biggest fears is if they come up and say, ‘Why are they doing this’? and ‘Why are they saying that’?”