Another day, another racist pile-up on social media. This time, the victim is Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United striker and, more importantly, successful food campaigner. I don’t know the actual content of the racist attacks on Rashford and I’m not sure I want to either. Rashford said the attacks represented “humanity and social media at its worst”. Only someone of unsound mind would disagree with him.
The latest abuse was on Instagram, which is owned by that social networks behemoth Facebook. This was their statement:
“There is no place for racism on Instagram and we are committed to removing it when we find it. We know there is more to do and we will continue to work closely with clubs, players and football authorities to investigate instances of discrimination and collectively tackle this issue.”
Well, first of all, there is a place for racism on Instagram. It’s there all the time. It is all very well Instagram saying they are “committed to removing it when (they) find it” but my question is very simple and it’s always the same: why is it there in the first place? Twitter gives arguably an even bigger platform to racists. The number of anonymous accounts is mind-blowing and they pile in on any story to make it worse, witness the appalling anti-Jewish racism posted by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. And like Instagram/Facebook, twitter talks a great fight:
“Racist behaviour has no place on our service and when we identify accounts that violate any of the Twitter Rules, we take enforcement action.
“We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our valued partners in football to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviour – both online and offline.”
This simply isn’t true. Racist behaviour does have a place on its service because, again, it’s there all the time. Like Instagram/Facebook, the only action twitter takes is removing racist posts, often just when prompted to do so. I would have thought at least one solution should be staring these companies in the face: there should be no place for anonymous, often untraceable accounts.
If you want to post on social networks, someone should have a record of who you actually are. Not the government or anything like that, but if, say, Instagram or twitter, enables stuff to be posted on its platform they should have clearly established that person exists and that they are subject to the law of the land. If someone was to approach Marcus Rashford in the street – and let’s face it, none of these abusive social network cowards would have the bottle to do so – and racially abuse him, they would end up before the Beak. Why do the same rules not apply to social networks?
I like using social networks and I don’t want them closed down. There are far more positives than negatives about them. But if something is unlawful in real life, it should be unlawful on social networks and if people post racist abuse on them, then they should be subject to the same laws as everywhere else.
It will probably be very difficult to better enforce social networks, but not impossible. The abuse to which Rashford and other black footballers are subject is unacceptable. When you next hear someone asking why players are still taking the knee before matches, at least now you’ll know why.
