What to do about Online Racist Abuse?

Josep Dowling said:
Should be ID’d to set up an account. Only way it stops. It’s amazing government haven’t forced these tech companies to do this.
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It's not that simple. In some countries, especially poorer ones, this is not always possible.
 
r3idy said:
Agree with you but it is highly unlikely to happen. A lot of the players use Insta / Twitter / TikTok for the promotion of their own person brand. From a monetisation point of view, it makes no sense to jump ship.

BTW not condoning any of the abuse that players took, nor suggesting if you dance with the devil then a price must be paid.
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That’s what solidarity is. It’s making a collective sacrifice. It doesn’t have to be for ever, they can organise a 24 hour black out initially, then give the Social Media providers a period of time to come up with a solution, then double the black out time if it’s not good enough and rinse and repeat.

The thing is that it’s currently doesn’t make sense financially for social media platforms to address the problem, if sports stars and musicians collectively left the platform, they would have to do something about it.
 
Jagga7 said:
I went to Saka's Instagram, and positive messages are drowning out the rubbish which is a major improvement and nice to see.
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This. It’s disgusting, it was sadly predictable based on social media over the past several years, although I feel the negatives are given too much attention and it makes these little trolls feel too important when they see there actions trending on Twitter. Reality is 10000s posted support, and the ones that posted support received likes and positive comments. The minority that posted racist abuse were drowned out. My advice don’t give them (racist) time or attention…. Don’t comment, simply report.

One thing that’s gone unmentioned and shows the negativity of social media is the preset idea to turn England (real out and about not online cowards) into hooligans. The expectation was that if England lost, fans would go on a rampage and Italians would be getting beaten up, black abused in the streets (if a black player was blamed), and shops smashed up.

This clearly didn’t happen and it’s concerning to have seen the amount of lies and misinformation that was spread on Twitter and that people believed.

1) 12 black people stabbed ( Complete lie)

2) Black people being thrown onto train tracks and into the Thames (not true, video was unrelated)

3) Video of Black guy being bullied by a white guy was posted as racist. However it was later confirmed by the guy who was being bullied that it was beef and not race relate.

4) Video of stereotypical England fans kicking the crap out of an British Asian guy, advertised as either racist beating up Italian fans or beating up fellow England fan cos he’s Asian. Reality, not justifying the violence, that guy was part of a gang that stormed Wembley. Those fans were hitting all that stormed regardless of colour, the Asian slipped so got it worse. To play devils advocate, if the people that stormed Wembley didn’t get dealt with quickly, the final might have been delayed or postponed as more tried to storm it.

My reason for highlighting these, and my outrage is because the above cause more damage to communities and could genuinely start conflicts.
 
Ayoba said:
On the issue of racism itself, has anyone noticed this is becoming a lot more common place now in England? What's especially concerning is i've seen more and more of this coming from people in their 20's - i'm 35 so these are a generation after me. I didnt see that much racism when I was growing up but now, christ its bad! Genuinely worried where this country is headed and its gotten to a point where I am not sure I want my kids growing up here and being subjected to it.
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I’m 38 and unfortunately it’s just as bad in our age group. The difference is (certainly online) that the 20 somethings are probably more likely to be actively involved in multiple social accounts whereas people our age are either quite active on a couple and not on others or relatively passive on all. Add to that more likelihood of kids and other things stopping screen time.
I have unfortunately seen a fair bit of racism on streets and in shops and the in person stuff I’ve seen seems to be largely 30/40 somethings. As it goes back up the ages it gets more passive but equally damaging. A client last week said to my colleague “what are you doing this weekend? Having a barbecue? That’s what you people do isn’t it?”
……..
 
For me, it's simple if you want to post comments on social media you have to provide some personal details, that way you are less likely to post racist comments and if you do, then they have your name and address and you should be charged with hate speech.

An alternative is to turn off the comments on social media platforms for celebrities.
 
Instagram don't even vet reports of racism. I sent one last week and got a response a few days later - saying they weren't even able to check it.

Maybe that would be a start.
 
Not sure how but it needs to end with prosecution

even a 500 quid fine

Accounts need to be verified
 
If current social medias are unwilling to change, a new social media that requires a "handshake" with reliable securities such as banking apps.

The sooner high profile people switch the sooner the other social media companies will fall in line.

Will that fix things? Absolutely not, it will still be rife. There is no fix short of removing access to the internet. The problem isn't the internet, it is how these people have formed such opinions, it is how they have come to think it is okay to say these things. Education is crucial at all levels and all forms, not just schools. Even in social circles, if someone is to say something that is wrong they need calling out, even if it's a friend.
 
Vidyoyo said:
I have a hard time taking the internet seriously so maybe I'm dumb but are they actually real accounts? Twitter is rife with fake accounts and - for whatever reason - they seem to only exist to get comments and retweets, which is precisely what this type of abuse would bring.

I imagine there's definitely actual abuse but it seems hard to fully comprehend the 'reality' given how much of a mess Twitter is at this point.
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Some are real eg name with actual known followers. Example is the knot who works for Savills.
 
JustAGuest said:
If you trust the government that's fine. In cases where you risk getting jailed (or worse) for having a negative opinion on those in power it becomes more problematic.
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I fail to grasp this. The government already knows who everyone is. Are there verified accounts out there that the government cant trace to the actual people? Especially ones where people use their real life names?

Surely if you're an Iranian reporter (random example) posting shit about the Iranian government through an eponymous and verified Instagram/Twitter account, they know who you are and there will be retributions if you're within their reach. You can always post anonymously, or use a proxy (a reporter or verified account from another country).
 
Rozay said:
So long as racism exists in society it will of course, exist on the Internet. The issue isn’t so much the racism online as it is the racism in the UK.

This is why Saka should have chosen Nigeria. On the whole, England will never love him the way Nigeria will.
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True, but it’s amplified by a complete lack of accountability online and supplemented by troll culture.

Removing the anonymous component of online behaviour would go some way to solving many issues in society.
 
Solve online racist abuse by having hard personal links to your online self and your real self, easily done via links to NINO, debit/credit cards etc.
 
The social media companies won't like it, but there will have to be some kind of account verification eventually so that offenders can be traced. Twitter and the rest are just too big to keep track of every racist post, and their "anything goes" attitude along with the anonymity just opens their platforms up to people who think they can do this kind of thing with no consequences. The problem is getting governments to enforce it as they're mostly based outside their jurisdictions.
 
Personal ID for social media. It will stop multiple accounts, and it will make people accountable for all sorts of abuse.

Cyber-bullying is a massive issue, also, that needs to be sorted out.

Either that, or ban Twitter, which is the worst thing ever made by man. Outside of the abuse, it is a complete time sink for people.
 
To put it simply there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. We live in an era of complete internet ambiguity.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram make too much money to be willing to moderate their platforms to the degree needed where you need identification to make an account.

People talk about authorities being granted such ready access to things like IP addresses etc but people in general loath the idea of their personal data so freely available to police etc.

The second thing to mention is that abuse via messaging isn’t seen as a high priority compared to other online crimes. The threshold for Facebook/Twitter etc to give up personal information of their users in a timely manner needs to be very high.
 
I'm sorry but if people are not leaving Twitter etc because of racial abuse (not necessarily concerning them), then I believe it's very unlikely they'd take any serious actions (ex. ID each profile).
It's possible from technical point of view, but the main thing those portals are concerned about is the posters activity. For the same reason Facebook has algorithms which would show you content you'd disagree on (it's more likely you'll engage into discussion = activity).

Everyone will say they're concerned, support "actions" against racial abuse and we'll just stay in status quo.
 
Hopefully they got an IP ban. Over billion social media users. The abuse could be coming from anywhere. so it's pretty hard to police.
 
Trequarista10 said:
Saw a tweet with the n word and it amazed me that the word isn't blocked/amended.

Can't even post l-o-l, feck, cnut, YAWN, lma-o, rof.l etc on this comparatively tiny forum without it being blocked or autocorrected.
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Yep. I was going to say trying being racist here and see what happens. It's because the admins and mods care.

Social media big boys don't.

They could easily write some ai to trawl tweets for rasicm or offensive content. It could be trained to learn from the stuff reported and action taken by real mods.

It's straightforward.
 
Leroy The Red said:
To put it simply there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. We live in an era of complete internet ambiguity.
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram make too much money to be willing to moderate their platforms to the degree needed where you need identification to make an account.

People talk about authorities being granted such ready access to things like IP addresses etc but people in general loath the idea of their personal data so freely available to police etc.

The second thing to mention is that abuse via messaging isn’t seen as a high priority compared to other online crimes. The threshold for Facebook/Twitter etc to give up personal information of their users in a timely manner needs to be very high.
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Doesn't really matter what they want do to, the abuse via social media, racism and otherwise, has reached a point where it's fairly obvious that it needs to be controlled at an entirely different level. The income from Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc isn't exactly small, so a bare minimum should be that the people responsible for the platforms are properly moderating it.

Start handing out absolutely insane fines and they'll suddenly come up with solutions that works.
 
UncleBob said:
Doesn't really matter what they want do to, the abuse via social media, racism and otherwise, has reached a point where it's fairly obvious that it needs to be controlled at an entirely different level. The income from Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc isn't exactly small, so a bare minimum should be that the people responsible for the platforms are properly moderating it.

Start handing out absolutely insane fines and they'll suddenly come up with solutions that works.
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Moderate it? Surely you don't mean people reviewing tweets after they were posted and reported by other users?

This can be done somehow with AI which is already pretty good with words/context recognition, and those flagged posts would need to be reviewed by so called moderators.

My only concern is I doubt social media platforms would like to take that responsibility. They are more used to reacting when absolutely forced to, or to flagged posts. The fines on the other hand should be directed at users, but it'd require ID processing and again, I don't see anyone seriously considering it.
 
UncleBob said:
Doesn't really matter what they want do to, the abuse via social media, racism and otherwise, has reached a point where it's fairly obvious that it needs to be controlled at an entirely different level. The income from Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc isn't exactly small, so a bare minimum should be that the people responsible for the platforms are properly moderating it.

Start handing out absolutely insane fines and they'll suddenly come up with solutions that works.
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I did think we were turning a corner with Ig a few months back but that was all pr work. Unless government legislation comes in, there is zero chance of these social media companies moderating their platforms to the extent necessary.

That is the only way this changes. These are multi million pound companies but there is no doubt that if they restrict who can uses their platforms via id verification it will mean less users and thus less revenue.
Racism is shite and most of us know this and whilst it’s commendable that when these things happen everyone is happy to push for stricter social media laws. The issue is these same people are the ones who’d hate the idea of their personal details being owned by all these social media companies and subsequently the authorities.
 
Has the abuse always been to this level or has it ramped up a lot over the past couple of years?
 
Borys said:
Moderate it? Surely you don't mean people reviewing tweets after they were posted and reported by other users?

This can be done somehow with AI which is already pretty good with words/context recognition, and those flagged posts would need to be reviewed by so called moderators.

My only concern is I doubt social media platforms would like to take that responsibility. They are more used to reacting when absolutely forced to, or to flagged posts. The fines on the other hand should be directed at users, but it'd require ID processing and again, I don't see anyone seriously considering it.
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Moderating is just a general term.

Again, who gives a feck if they would like to take that responsibility or not.

It's not a question of if they would like it.

it's platforms for racism and abuse, just introduce the fear of being fined into oblivion for failing to stop it and the solutions will introduce themselves.
 
Removing anonymity on social media, (needing a passport number or whatever to create an account) will obviously massively reduce the amount of online racial abuse (and may eventually help reduce it overall in time) and will destroy the lives of the ones who continue to racially abuse without anonymity.

But.

Will Twitter, Facebook and Instagram implement this and massively reduce their number of users and therefore income?

They might support social equality with rainbow banners and hashtags, but ultimately money is what matters to them.
 
Watching the news at one and bemused by the short-sightedness of making a handful of dickheads on Twitter (some of whom might not even exist) *the* story.

It’s the school shooter thing: the more prominence you give these people the more it will happen.
 
Also regarding the proposed solution of ID verification checks - its a tricky one. The liberal in me considers it a bit of a red zone as far as data protection and privacy is concerned, but again, social media participation isn't an obligatory human right, so people can always opt to ignore the platforms altogether if they don't like such enforcements. There's also the likelihood that tech giants will never happily agree to such proposals, and will likely vigorously lobby them away.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if the majority of these lowlife scum are from Russia, Ukraine and other eastern bloc countries.. Absolutely sickening.
 
Bale Bale Bale said:
Has the abuse always been to this level or has it ramped up a lot over the past couple of years?
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I feel it has always been this bad but the recent decade highlighted much more how many racist idiots are out there since everyone and their mother now understands how to use facebook, twitter etc.

Social media is a two-edged sword. On the one had it is giving people a voice that have been too long overhead in discussions, but on the other hand it of course gives anyone who loves to verbally abuse other people the possibility to do so, even anonymously, which seems to make the vileness of the abuse even worse.
 
Kaos said:
Also regarding the proposed solution of ID verification checks - its a tricky one. The liberal in me considers it a bit of a red zone as far as data protection and privacy is concerned, but again, social media participation isn't an obligatory human right, so people can always opt to ignore the platforms altogether if they don't like such enforcements. There's also the likelihood that tech giants will never happily agree to such proposals, and will likely vigorously lobby them away.
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Sure, but once you get mandatory IDing on social media, it's an easy next step to make you link ID for any website you sign up for.
 
duffer said:
Is there anything Twitter could realistically do regarding authentication that the folks on 4chan or reddit won't find a way around in about 10 minutes?
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No. Which is why the calls for authentication/ID always sound ridiculous to me. The only people that wouldn't ultimately hurt in some way, either through the data laundering + algorithm generation the tech companies would use such data for, illicit govt use or whatever, are the people it'd be set up to detect.
 
Kaos said:
Its cretins like her who are largely to blame. Her stance on players taking the knee was shocking from a woman in her position. She can spare us the crocodile tears.
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Cretins like her and her party who deliberately undermine support and remove funding for the needy in society, weaponise nationalism and point the finger of blame at the "not us" for their own systematic abandoning of the people.

On this site we've seen numerous people saying it's not British society at large but "the chavs".Perhaps you might want to consider why people are this way and the massive pivotal part that politics and Government play in it. Maybe consider it next time you're at the polling booths.
 
Fingeredmouse said:
Cretins like her and her party who deliberately undermine support and remove funding for the needy in society, weaponise nationalism and point the finger of blame at the "not us" for their own systematic abandoning of the people.

On this site we've seen numerous people saying it's not British society at large but "the chavs".Perhaps you might want to consider why people are this way and the massive pivotal part that politics and Government play in it. Maybe consider it next time you're at the polling booths.
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Absolutely. I hate to bring politics into this, but its hardly a good account for England when they constantly prop up these scumbags every time the polls open.
 
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