What to do about Online Racist Abuse?

crossy1686

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I'm yet to see a valid case for social media even existing, it's done nothing but spread bollocks and allow abusers to hide behind an avatar with the handle "westHam4Ever44354"
 

crossy1686

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To be fair, that's also a very tough ask. It's a revenue stream for most of them with sponsored posts and promos.
And there it is. Companies use it for advertising and celebs use it as a platform. As long as they make money from it they won't leave and the problem won't go away. Twitter itself has been coded in a way that's made it systematically racist, which is something they're trying to fix but there's no way this issue gets resolved any time soon
 

FatTails

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These platforms couldn’t care less. I used to report racist comments and stopped because I always got a similar generic response. I just tried to report a racist comment on Saka’s Instagram to see if anything has changed, and got this:


Social media platforms solution is to create communities basically. If you don’t like racists, you can block them and not see their stuff. Overtime you will see less and less of them.

Meanwhile, they will see more and more of each other over time and have their own bubble of racist happiness. Same thing happens with antivaxxers, extremist ideologies, and just about any “culture war” out there.

From their perspective, this is perfect. Everyone gets to see a lot more of what they like, spend more time on the platform, no friction is introduced to sign ups and user attraction, and the need for moderation remains low.
 

horsechoker

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These platforms couldn’t care less. I used to report racist comments and stopped because I always got a similar generic response. I just tried to report a racist comment on Saka’s Instagram to see if anything has changed, and got this:


Social media platforms solution is to create communities basically. If you don’t like racists, you can block them and not see their stuff. Overtime you will see less and less of them.

Meanwhile, they will see more and more of each other over time and have their own bubble of racist happiness. Same thing happens with antivaxxers, extremist ideologies, and just about any “culture war” out there.

From their perspective, this is perfect. Everyone gets to see a lot more of what they like, spend more time on the platform, no friction is introduced to sign ups and user attraction, and the need for moderation remains low.
Completely agree, they want the numbers. Communities of racists and communities of regular folk, seperated but under the same roof.
 

Brown Toothpick

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And there it is. Companies use it for advertising and celebs use it as a platform. As long as they make money from it they won't leave and the problem won't go away. Twitter itself has been coded in a way that's made it systematically racist, which is something they're trying to fix but there's no way this issue gets resolved any time soon
Unless there's an advanced technological way of detecting racist posts and people that post them. Players leaving the platforms will only hurt their pockets, which is a tough thing to justify when they're also being racially abused as well.

Twitter is a cesspool, and they definitely feed on hateful speech, but I shudder at Facebook which has more shit on it for years and nothing has been done with full account profiles and pics to identify hateful people.
 

Fingeredmouse

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Everyone mentioning ideas like making it mandatory to produce ID before you can sign up for an account online are missing the point, plus that is a terrible idea for a number of reasons.
This is a society problem, social media is simply a vessel for these people. Nobody logs on twitter or facebook and suddenly becomes racist.
Yes it makes it easier and more visible, but minorities have been saying for decades just how common racism is, only to be not believed.

Seriously, forcing everyone to produce ID is the worst possible solution that will probably (definitely) harm minorities more than the actual people this idea is supposed to target.
All it does is try to sweep racism under the rug rather than face the uncomfortable truth about it, nor does it try to educate people, and it won't eradicate it either. It will just make people feel better about themselves because they don't have to scroll past it anymore, that way they can convince themselves it doesn't exist again.

If you are not surprised at seeing racial abuse online, then just imagine how prevalent it is in society.
Abso-fecking-lutely.
 

crossy1686

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Unless there's an advanced technological way of detecting racist posts and people that post them. Players leaving the platforms will only hurt their pockets, which is a tough thing to justify when they're also being racially abused as well.

Twitter is a cesspool, and they definitely feed on hateful speech, but I shudder at Facebook which has more shit on it for years and nothing has been done with full account profiles and pics to identify hateful people.
They have the technology now, they just don't want to dedicate the resources towards stopping it because it doesn't affect their share price and new features that increase revenue do.
 
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To be fair, that's also a very tough ask. It's a revenue stream for most of them with sponsored posts and promos.
And not just for the players. Most players also employ social media managers, social media analysts, profile enhancement specialists...the list goes on. And that's only jobs that are directly linked to social media.

There's a lot of tangentially related employees like the marketing staff, brand strategists, legacy media coordinators etc who would also be impacted to some degree.

It's no exaggeration to say that the average major player dropping their Twitter brand would impact 20 employees. For the new breed of player/personalities like Rashford you can double that.

When you talk about 'deleting Twitter' you're actually talking about wiping out an industry.

People still talk like we're in 2012 where a player like Harry Kane is just logging on for 5 minutes on his phone to shitpost during the ad-breaks. In reality, for 90% of players, and just about all the major ones, their social media is managed entirely on their behalf - often by a team of people.
 
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Mwooyo

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Unless there's an advanced technological way of detecting racist posts and people that post them. Players leaving the platforms will only hurt their pockets, which is a tough thing to justify when they're also being racially abused as well.

Twitter is a cesspool, and they definitely feed on hateful speech, but I shudder at Facebook which has more shit on it for years and nothing has been done with full account profiles and pics to identify hateful people.
This is an easy issue to solve I think. Yes the solution lies in attaching real life IDs to the online profile but I think the current proposals are too drastic and social media companies wont accept this. I think the whole thing is solveable using a 3 step process.
Step 1. All accounts should remain as is but the social media companies should allow people to attach IDs to their online profiles.
Step 2. Verification happens on those IDs to confirm validity. There are existing companies that provide automated solutions to do this. Even crypto exchanges have began using these solutions.
Step 3. The last step is to straight up make it impossible to reply or interact with posts of verified users if you havent attached your ID.

Last steps can be to further restrict the ability and type of content accounts without IDs can post. For example, you can straight up prevent them from posting pics or media until they have been active for a certain time period or they upload some form of ID
With this, users decide for themselves when and if they make the jump and there can be real world repercussions to posts
 

predator

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If I had to verify my ID for using Facebook, twitter or Instagram and it put an end to those sending monkey emojis and using racial slurs towards young black footballers then sign me up!

Surely the pros of it outweigh the cons?
 

RedDevil@84

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The players need to all leave those platforms in one movement in order to make a powerful symbol
No they won't. Too much money involved. I think CR7 makes about a million dollars for every Instagram post of his or something of that sort.

The platforms and the celebrities (including individuals, clubs, national teams) both make too much money off this. They won't give up. Also many players have social media, marketing and other stuff involved in their contracts. They will need to go back to basic salary pw contracts and don't think either parties will be happy with just that.
 

JG3001

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Am I being a bit too simplistic, but couldn’t you just create an algorithm to detect racist terms/phrases (and any alphanumeric/emoji variants) and prevent them being posted? Have them automatically reported as well. This sort of coding stuff has existed for years.

Similar to how sites stop you signing up with swear words as user names due to graphic language… usually returns a warning message or the sign up button blanks out so you can’t press it
 

Tom Cato

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The most depressing prediction as soon as that shoot-out was over was that Saka, Rashford and Sancho would get a plethora of vile racist abuse by keyboard cowards.

This is as horrific as it is predictable and it needs to be stamped out like the virus that it is in society!

For me the only way to correct this is to have full identity authentication so it is no longer ‘Gammon-warrior69’ who’s seen to be abusing these people, but Mark Jones, 24yrs old from Basingstoke.


But of course these are private platforms and so Twitter, Insta and Facebook will come out with the same bullshit PR nonsense and do absolutely feck all!


There are other arguments to this that's easily drowned out in the passion of wanting to hurt racists and other scum.

Anonymity is not only a tool for evildoers, its a platform for millions of people to express their opinions, viewpoints, take part in public debate and otherwise engage with the world without having to reveal their identity for many good reasons, such as simply not wanting to, fear of reprecussion, fear of ridicule and shame, etc.

It's unfortunately not as simple as forcing authentication, it severely limits social interaction for millions globally:

1) People under the age of 18 generally donthave ID's, or will have to have permission from their parents before creating an account online if they ned help getting an ID - For some, the prospect of anonymity can be an escape from a troublefilled home life.

2) Social debate will most likely be incredibly hampered. Just take this message board. Most of us use a username. If everyone were keen on using our real names, we all would. Here I can write dump opinions without running the risk of someone doxxing me for any reason. Think racism is bad? Imagine having people call your job accusing you of any bad thing under the sun for having gotten into a heated argument with someone.

3) Even if real names can be hidden behind the username, there is the enormous questionmark of the realiabilty and culpability of feeding social media platforms millions of identifications, passports, etc for storage. That is one databreach away from ruin for everyone. No one wants a world where 10 million ID's with SSN's or other identifying information is on the loose. That is only a question of when and not if.

4) Anonymity for many people is not a preference, its an absolute necessity. This is especially true in countries with oppressive governments that spend their time stiffling journalistic freedom, and lay harsh punishments on anything even resembling oppoisition. The situation in Belarus for example would be intolerable for any government critic hiding behind a VPN if they had to reveal their names. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram houses more of these accounts than we will ever know about. Frankly, keeping them safe is significantly more important than forcing ID's over racism after sporting events, or in general.

Personally I prefer realistic counter-measures, such as triggerwords and autobans couple with real world consequences.

For example it can work a bit like: 1 ) Account xx writes N***ER - Receives an autoban. IP LOCKED x Days
or 2) Account xx writes N***ER triggering an algorithm <paramter: thread + comments x number = FLAG POST = Lock Comments x time | autoban = IP LOCKED
or 3) Account xx write N***ER - IP = NEW ACCOUNT > IP verified > Previous ban = Offense. = 2nd offense. IP STORED - Sent to database = Forward to cooperating police unit in local region.

People can simply use VPN's, but SoMe platforms can choose to ban the network adresses assosciated with them. Of course that bigtime calls #4 into the ring.

It's up to legislature to make racism and online abuse see actual, heavy fines that don't cross the principle of unusual punishment, but also sufficient to make it both hurt AND work as a deterrent. Putting focus on identifying people behind these IP adresses in a very pubic fashion is a great tool for helping to curb outbursts, but of course not the end-be-all, there will always be racists.

Personally I never write things that can't see the light of day, but I will sometimes say something that makes me cringe on the inside after thinking about it for a while, or I prefer my employees not to see, such as discussing events at the workplace under cover of anonymity.

There's no easy answer here. The people who spend their time attacking young men and women for having a different skin color rightfully deserve punishment. But I would caution against going the route of passionate response, because there are many considerations, and better options over ruining the ecosystem the majority of people live in.
 
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If I had to verify my ID for using Facebook, twitter or Instagram and it put an end to those sending monkey emojis and using racial slurs towards young black footballers then sign me up!

Surely the pros of it outweigh the cons?
Cons
  • Racist trolling will still happen as an overwhelmingly huge percentage comes from abroad - especially Middle Eastern and South Asian countries
  • Further privacy erosion to government and big tech
  • A large number of people don't have ID. Studies have shown that the working class, ethnic minorities regardless of class and disabled people are the most likely to not have ID. For many disabled people who are housebound social media is a lifeline to the outside world
  • Massive impacts on freedom of expression. Even some (currently) legal speech can be extremely controversial. People will self-censor.
  • Mission creep will surely happen, as it always does ("You're used to giving ID for social media, so what's wrong with doing so for x", "You were fine with tracking down racists, so why not critics of x")
  • Potential for data breaches
Pros
  • ???
 
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If I had to verify my ID for using Facebook, twitter or Instagram and it put an end to those sending monkey emojis and using racial slurs towards young black footballers then sign me up!

Surely the pros of it outweigh the cons?
I get the sentiment but I can think of many cons.

1) Someone in a dictatorship, or even so called democracy, who exposes things or speaks out against his/her government.
2) Someone from the LGBT community in a country or state of a country that is extremely hostile to that
3) Pro abortionist in Poland
4) Anyone with an opinion whose opinion might easily be misconstrued. Eg anti war being called terrorist sympathiser, or even a normal German/Swede a few years back who isn’t racist was pro immigration but then felt the influx was too much could easily be called racist.
5) women working on only fans or in other adult industries who might use social media to promote themselves would be at increased risk of getting “outted”
6) Could result in huge data breach that would substantially increase ID theft/fraud.

The social media companies have the algorithms to block out suspicious tweets and have someone assess it. My feeling is that they don’t want to pay for having mods assessing 100000s of tweets.
 
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Zen86

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The problem is that countries like the USA may not accept it. They could accept political stuff thru the UN in days but anti racism, no. Of course then they have to classify what is racism and get it passed thru the Security Council and the General Assembly. Putting the onus on the platforms it's posted on.
It’s one of those problems that looks straight forward on the face of it, yet has major challenges no matter which route is taken.
 
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kouroux

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No they won't. Too much money involved. I think CR7 makes about a million dollars for every Instagram post of his or something of that sort.

The platforms and the celebrities (including individuals, clubs, national teams) both make too much money off this. They won't give up. Also many players have social media, marketing and other stuff involved in their contracts. They will need to go back to basic salary pw contracts and don't think either parties will be happy with just that.
Something's gotta give though. The platforms will never make a move unless a huge of celebrities band together
 

FreddieTheReddie

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Off topic question to British people: how do you live without ID cards? Do you have passport instead? What do you use for identification? How do you create bank accounts or apply to schools or vote? I couldn’t take an exam in Hungary without showing my ID card. Or everyone just remembers their names and people believe what you say?
 

Ludens the Red

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Off topic question to British people: how do you live without ID cards? Do you have passport instead? What do you use for identification? How do you create bank accounts or apply to schools or vote? I couldn’t take an exam in Hungary without showing my ID card. Or everyone just remembers their names and people believe what you say?
Drivers license
 

Creamium

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I can see the logic in the ID suggestions, but that just hides the issue rather than fix it. It wont stop the racist parents influencing their kids, or the government basically giving the racists basically the green light to do and say the awful stuff they want to.

Perhaps a good thing would be for the massive superstars that aren't the target of the racist abuse to use their online presence to post educational things to raise awareness, rather than just making a sponsored post to make a few extra quid on top of the millions they've already got. Imagine Ronaldo or Messi posting about black issues, or promoting LGBT stuff regularly etc, rather than some cringe shampoo or underwear advert. But when it comes down to it I suppose money is the main thing they care about.


Yep. I was going to say trying being racist here and see what happens. It's because the admins and mods care.
Hehe oh cmon.

There are a good chunk of clearly racist people on here who are allowed to carry on doing their thing over and over. Unless someone says something outrageously over the top like the n-word or some other straight up slur they face absolutely no kind of punishment. And even then it's often just a one off little warning and nothing else, with them being allowed to go on. I know of several black people who no longer post on here because the racists (and other bigots) are obviously prioritized and mollycoddled.

It's this kind of acceptance that is one of the biggest problems because it allows it to fester and become the norm in society.
 
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2 man midfield

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Sure we could introduce ID verification, but I’m not sure that solves anything. Those people will still think those things, they’ll just be wise to the fact it could land them in hot water. Which is good, I guess - It reduces the volume of bile. But it’s a short term solution is I think what I’m saying. The real solution needs to come from education and this generation being adamant that this shit does not get passed down any further. Racism is learned, not innate.
 

Borys

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Am I being a bit too simplistic, but couldn’t you just create an algorithm to detect racist terms/phrases (and any alphanumeric/emoji variants) and prevent them being posted? Have them automatically reported as well. This sort of coding stuff has existed for years.

Similar to how sites stop you signing up with swear words as user names due to graphic language… usually returns a warning message or the sign up button blanks out so you can’t press it
It's not only possible, but rather easy to do. Those platforms can just pull all the flagged posts and run an analysis to get the most common phrases, and then ban / flag / warn or whatever.

As already mentioned before, the idea to engage people is to separate them into closed circles, grouped by views / opinions.
So basically show racist posts to racists, as long as it's not reported it will fly.
 

Stacks

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The most depressing prediction as soon as that shoot-out was over was that Saka, Rashford and Sancho would get a plethora of vile racist abuse by keyboard cowards.

This is as horrific as it is predictable and it needs to be stamped out like the virus that it is in society!

For me the only way to correct this is to have full identity authentication so it is no longer ‘Gammon-warrior69’ who’s seen to be abusing these people, but Mark Jones, 24yrs old from Basingstoke.

But of course these are private platforms and so Twitter, Insta and Facebook will come out with the same bullshit PR nonsense and do absolutely feck all!
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.
exactly. Its a piss easy solution
It is the only way. Should be done ASAP.
NO. You are giving 3rd party companies access to hundreds of millions of people's sensitive documents and who knows what they do with that shit. Also what about younger people who don't have ID or those in poorer countries? It then becomes a platform that discriminates like the old voter ID stuff. I dread the idea of companies like facebook (who have been previously exposed) collecting even more sensitive data.
 

Stacks

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It's not only possible, but rather easy to do. Those platforms can just pull all the flagged posts and run an analysis to get the most common phrases, and then ban / flag / warn or whatever.

As already mentioned before, the idea to engage people is to separate them into closed circles, grouped by views / opinions.
So basically show racist posts to racists, as long as it's not reported it will fly.
they already do. I have tweeted swear words and it gives me a warning to double check that I actually want to post this as it is a flagged word etc
 

Jericholyte2

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NO. You are giving 3rd party companies access to hundreds of millions of people's sensitive documents and who knows what they do with that shit. Also what about younger people who don't have ID or those in poorer countries? It then becomes a platform that discriminates like the old voter ID stuff. I dread the idea of companies like facebook (who have been previously exposed) collecting even more sensitive data.
Please offer a valid alternative then.

Don’t get me wrong, I see no way they’d do it in their current setup, but surely the idea that people can directly message active sportspeople and famous people with no restriction, all with impunity and anonymity is just crazy.
 

JPRouve

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Please offer a valid alternative then.

Don’t get me wrong, I see no way they’d do it in their current setup, but surely the idea that people can directly message active sportspeople and famous people with no restriction, all with impunity and anonymity is just crazy.
The hard truth is that there is no easy fix, people need to do some hard work and actively participate in the creation of a society where racism is less prevalent. The mention of using an ID doesn't fix the issue it only hides it while exposing people to even worse threats like identity theft.
 

Jericholyte2

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The hard truth is that there is no easy fix, people need to do some hard work and actively participate in the creation of a society where racism is less prevalent. The mention of using an ID doesn't fix the issue it only hides it while exposing people to even worse threats like identity theft.
Completely agree, in the current system it couldn’t be workable, because a for-profit 3rd Party could never be trusted with that amount of personal. The worry is that, in a more insidious, back-handed way, they probably have even more info at present!
 

Borys

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Please offer a valid alternative then.

Don’t get me wrong, I see no way they’d do it in their current setup, but surely the idea that people can directly message active sportspeople and famous people with no restriction, all with impunity and anonymity is just crazy.
I don't think that's how it works though? You can only send a message to somebody who you follow.

Anybody can tweet about anyone, and I still don't understand why ID solves the whole issue. So you know who tweeted that by name and what's next?
 

Jericholyte2

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I don't think that's how it works though? You can only send a message to somebody who you follow.

Anybody can tweet about anyone, and I still don't understand why ID solves the whole issue. So you know who tweeted that by name and what's next?
You then immediately know who the perpetrator is and can track them down, as you could do with any other crime. Also acts as a deterrent as, say if I was a racist, I’d be more inclined to spout abuse if my name and details weren’t immediately available to authorities.
 

Stacks

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Please offer a valid alternative then.

Don’t get me wrong, I see no way they’d do it in their current setup, but surely the idea that people can directly message active sportspeople and famous people with no restriction, all with impunity and anonymity is just crazy.
Its not my job. If they paid me maybe I would dedicate some energy to it.
 

Jericholyte2

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Its not my job. If they paid me maybe I would dedicate some energy to it.
But your saying our suggestions aren’t possible, so what would your alternative be? If you reject an idea you must surely have an alternate view?