Manchester United and Kick It Out to meet Twitter after racism incidents
Manchester United and Kick It Out will meet representatives of Twitter regarding concerns over racism and other abuse aimed at footballers on the social media platform.
Paul Pogba became the third player in seven days to suffer racist comments on Twitter after he missed a penalty in United’s 1-1 draw at Wolves on Monday.
“Over the next few weeks, Twitter representatives will meet with Manchester United, Kick It Out and any other civil society stakeholders interested in hearing about the proactive work Twitter is doing to address online racist abuse towards certain footballers in the UK,” Twitter said.
“We have always maintained an open and healthy dialogue with our partners in this space but we know we need to do more to protect our users. Racist behaviour has no place on our platform and we strongly condemn it.”
Kick It Out is expected to outline at its meeting with a Twitter UK executive its argument that because of the sheer number of the platform’s users the onus is on the company to take the initiative to try to eradicate abuse.
A study commissioned by Kick It Out found that between August 2014 and March 2015 there were 135,000 discriminatory posts levelled at players and other staff associated with the 20 Premier League clubs. Although this is considerable, the anti-discrimination body may outline to Twitter that this is a small proportion of the abuse on the platform.
United say football should act centrally and it is understood the club want Kick It Out, the Premier League and Football Association to act in concert, along with the government, to effect change.
The FA is seeking a meeting with Twitter, and the Premier League is engaged in a dialogue with the platform and other relevant bodies, including the government.
Last month the Premier League, FA and English Football League wrote an open letter to the minister for sport calling for a review of banning orders and the creation of a working group “to establish where social media companies can support our desire to prevent discriminatory behaviour online”.
Twitter said: “We look forward to working more closely with our partners to develop shared solutions to this issue. In the meantime, for Twitter’s part, we will continue to proactively monitor the conversation and take aggressive enforcement action when content violates our rules.”