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Revealed! Twitter yanked off more than 1,900 vile racist tweets

 

Twitter removed more than 1,900 racist, abusive tweets in the wake of England’s Euro 2020 final defeat, the social media giant has revealed.

England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were racially abused online after missing penalties in the shootout against Italy at Wembley last month.

Now, Twitter said it had identified and removed 1,622 tweets during the final and in the 24 hours after the game rising to 1,961 three days after the game.

It also said the majority of the abusive tweets were sent from the UK  though police reported that almost four times more of the criminal comments were posted from overseas.

The social media giant said racism was a ‘deep societal issue’ still also taking place offline, but acknowledged it needed to do better to make its platform safe and encouraged further collective action alongside government and football authorities.

In an update on its response to the incident, Twitter said it had put in place plans to ‘quickly identify and remove racist, abusive tweets targeting the England team and wider Euros conversation’ before the tournament.

In response to the incident, some campaigners have called for ID verification to be introduced to social media to cut the spread of online abuse and help quickly identify those involved, but Twitter said its analysis suggests this would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse during the Euros from happening.

read also Police make 11 arrests over racist abuse of England players

According to Twitter’s data, 99% of the account owners it suspended during the tournament for abuse rule breaches were identifiable and not posting anonymously.

Descent users of twitter have however lampooned those who abuse the system describing them as joy killers who by their actions are spoiling healthy interaction, freedom of expression and business enterprise.

 

 

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