Television star calls for action to weed out Twitter trolls
TELEVISION presenter Rylan Clark-Neal has called for social media platforms to add verification steps to weed out vicious trolls.
The broadcaster revealed that he regularly receives death threats and faces homophobic slurs on Twitter, and urged technology companies to verify users, as they already do with the blue tick system, to make it possible to trace the sources of abuse.
“I would love to see a world of social media where everyone was verified to some extent, to the point where you may need some form of ID verification to have an account,” he said.
“I think that would really change social media for the better because the people that use social media the right way, it won’t affect them but the people that use social media the extreme wrong ways, it will get rid of them, it will eliminate it.”
He added: “That is not stopping people having an opinion, absolutely not – that is what the whole platform is for. If you don’t like someone you don’t like someone, but it will make people think about what they say.
“By all means people, even if they are verified, can still tweet me and say: ‘Ugh he’s so talentless’. That’s fine, but when people are saying ‘I’m going to come for you and cut your throat’ and things like this, would they be saying that if they knew that they were completely traceable because they were a verified account because the platform will have their identification? No, I don’t think they would.”
Clark-Neal was speaking ahead of his Thread Talks performance on Wednesday at Samsung KX, the technology firm’s venue in London’s King Cross, which hosts tech tutorials, health and well-being sessions and other classes.
He will share his experiences on social media with the audience and also plans to read out some of the insulting messages that he has received.