Football players facing vile abuse and racist remarks after a big miss or a bad game is nothing new. This issue has been ravaging the football world for years, to the point that many players have stopped using social media to protect their families and mental health.
Over the years, several players, managers, actors, and even major entities have called out Meta for not safeguarding their platform against abuse.
Players like Phil Jones, Ivan Toney, Ian Wright, Chris Smalling, Ashley Young, Troy Deeney, Danny Rose, Axel Tuanzebe, Reece James, and more have called out Meta for not making any efforts to curb the abuse and racism on Instagram and Facebook.
It isn’t just footballers, even high-profile celebrities like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Kim Kardashian, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jennifer Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, Katy Perry, Mark Ruffalo, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and more have done the same. In fact, many of these celebrities were a part of the #StopHateForProfit campaign that criticized Mark Zuckerberg for Meta’s failures to address racism, hate speech, and misinformation on Facebook and Instagram.
The world of Football had a similar campaign as they looked to combat abuse and racism on social media, after English players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka all missed a penalty in England’s shootout loss against Italy in Euro 2020.
After the game, they were spammed with vile abuse, racist remarks, and every form of derogatory language on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and more.
A hate crime investigation was carried out by the UK Football Policing Unit, and several people were arrested.
There was also an anti-racism petition to permanently ban anyone caught making racist remarks from attending football matches that received over a million signatures. Fans had hoped that this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back, and Meta would finally take measures to do something about the abuse and make Facebook and Instagram safe platforms for users.
However, nothing came out of it, and players kept receiving abuse and racism thrown at them after every bad game.
2023 saw one of the most blatant cases of Meta doing nothing to protect users from abuse when Ivan Toney was on the receiving end of racist DMs.
Toney was subjected to racist abuse from an account named Antonio Neill. Although they banned Neill’s account, they claimed they cannot take any further action as the report was not made through their “in-app” portal.
Toney posted the screenshots on his social media with the caption:
“I wasn’t even going to post this but I woke up angry…”
Brentford condemned the racist abuse and took the incident to the police while also making their frustrations known to Meta.
Instead of making efforts to punish the abusers, the Meta representative started prompting the users to utilize the Hidden Words feature. While a welcome feature, this felt like Meta’s way of avoiding the issue instead of addressing it.
“No one should have to experience racist abuse and sending messages like this is completely against our rules.
DMs are private spaces, which means we can’t take action unless someone reports the message to us in-app – but we also want to help protect people from having to see this abuse in the first place.
That’s why we’ve developed our Hidden Words feature, which filters offensive comments and DMs, and we’re working closely with football bodies to help players turn these tools on.”
Due to such behavior from social media platforms, players still get barraged with abuse to this day.
In the most recent case, Newcastle United’s Joe Willock was the target of racist abuse and threats on Instagram this week.
The English midfielder came on as an 88th-minute substitute during Newcastle’s 2-0 win against Crystal Palace. Shortly after coming on, he missed a gilt-edged opportunity to extend his team’s lead.
Harvey Barnes was through on goal and took a shot from a tight angle, with the ball falling into the path of Joe Willock after the goalkeeper’s save. Willock was essentially running onto the ball and had the entire goal at his mercy with the goalkeeper scrambling off the floor. However, Willock ended up shooting the ball wide in a horrific miss.
After the game, he received a series of abusive and racist messages from an anonymous account on Instagram with the handle Yskyemm (@ykem240).
The abuser sent disgusting messages like “I’m planning to kill you. Sooner or later you’ll have a bullet in your heart,” and “I can’t forgive you. A dirty black man. I’m gonna kill you in a horrible, painful way.”
While it isn’t known exactly why the deranged person sent these abhorrent messages, some are speculating that it could be due to the involvement of gambling. Perhaps the guy had a lot of money riding on the result, and Willock’s miss ended up costing him money.
Willock, who is of Caribbean descent, shared a screenshot of his Instagram DMs that he received from a user who was racially abusing him and his family while also threatening his life. He added his reply, “I pray you and your family find God. And may him have mercy on you.”
This wasn’t the first time Willock was on the receiving end of abuse on social media. Newcastle United immediately contacted the police, and the Northumbria police confirmed that they’ve started an investigation in conjunction with the UK Football Policing Unit.
Newcastle also released an official statement on X:
“Sadly, Joe has faced this before. Each time, we have acted quickly to support him and that has been our immediate priority again.
We have swiftly reported this matter to the police and we will fully support any investigation to identify the person responsible and hold them accountable, wherever they are.”
The club officials have also called out Meta for co-operation and to do a better job of protecting users from hate and vile abuse.
“This can only happen with meaningful action from Meta, Instagram’s owners. We urge Meta to give the police all the information they need to identify the perpetrator, and to do so quickly.
“Removing content and applying message filters in not enough. Social media companies must do more to protect users and support the prosecution of those who seek to break the law on their platforms. We stand firmly with Joe and anyone else who faces this kind of abuse.”
What do you make of this situation? Do you think social media companies do enough to protect players from abuse and racism? Let us know in the comments section.
