‘It is time to take a stand against online hate’

By Sanjay Bhandari

SOCIAL MEDIA is just like the real world but on steroids.

Every action and emotion is compressed and exaggerated. It can be a place of immense joy, a crucial source of real-time news and a springboard for vital political change.

The Arab Spring, Clap for Carers, Black Lives Matter – all these are social movements that have been positive­ly accelerated by social media, while Sarah Cooper’s Trump imper­sonations, Michael Spicer’s Room Next Door and Andrew Cot­ter’s adventures with his labradors Olive and Mabel have kept us connected and enter­tained during the forced isolation of lockdown.

Of course, when so­cial media companies developed their prod­ucts, this would have been the kind of peace­ful idyll they envisaged.

But sadly, like hu­manity, social media has a dark side. Bully­ing, racism and hate is rife. Trolls have weap­onised social media and football, our na­tional religion, has be­come a battleground.

Football and social media can be a positive combined force: think of Marcus Rashford campaigning for free school meals. But social media is also a magnet for hate. Its relative an­onymity combined with fragmented law en­forcement creates a shelter for trolls and en­courages “pile-ons” where one abusive troll encourages others into a frothing spiral of hate.

Arsenal legend Ian Wright, Crystal Palace winger Wilfried Zaha and Sheffield United striker David McGol­drick have all been re­cent high-profile victims. In the cases of Wright and Zaha, the perpetra­tors were children.

In order to tackle on­line hate, everyone needs to do more.

First, we need better regulation and enforce­ment. Technology is massively under-regu­lated (compared to oth­er industries that im­pact our daily lives like banking, medicine, en­ergy, food). Recently, I met with the home sec­retary and was very en­couraged by her desire to drive real change. The online harms bill is potentially a game-changer. It would create a duty of care on social media companies and a regulator with power. If the bill is passed, the UK would be world leaders in social media regulation. We encour­age its adoption. But we will also need better connected law enforce­ment and prosecution processes as trolls are falling through the cracks. They need to be identified and punished.

Second, we need so­cial media companies to be part of the solu­tion. We cannot just de­monise them – this is a technology problem so we will need technology solutions. We need poli­cies that remove hate speech quickly. We need more content moderators to review complaints. We need more investment in ar­tificial intelligence to automate the suppres­sion of unlawful content. We need greater speed and transparency over the entire complaints process. We need loop­holes to be closed (such as the ability on Insta­gram to direct message any user). We need rapid provision of user infor­mation to law enforce­ment when investigating incidents (though we need to preserve the right to create anony­mous accounts as that may serve legitimate purposes – for example, if you are gay in a coun­try where homosexuali­ty is illegal, an anony­mous social media ac­count may be a vital link to support).

We need social me­dia companies to team up with us to create bet­ter understanding of the different kinds of troll­ing behaviour so we can create more targeted re­sponse strategies – how much of the hate is one-off? How much is com­mitted by children? How much is organised? If so, who are the members of those networks? What are their motivations?

Social media firms should also utilise their depth of resources to actively aid the wider battle against discrimi­nation by using their platforms to educate the public and to accel­erate the reporting of abuse. We have an on­going dialogue with so­cial media companies and they are already doing some of this work, but they need to do more. Increased reg­ulation would doubtless accelerate this work.

Finally, we all need to play our part as individ­uals and ‘Take A Stand’ against racism, discrim­ination and hate. We need a cultural reset. All of us fans and partici­pants need to exhibit zero tolerance. We need to become activists not bystanders. Our mantra should be ‘See It, Hear It, Report It’. Players should continue to play their part by using their platforms to keep the issue in the public eye. Governing bodies, clubs and charities like ours will continue to play our part by lobbying government and social media companies for meaningful change. We should also conduct our own independent social media monitoring and investigations to hold people accountable and create evidence trails to support prosecutions (as the Premier League has done for Neil Mau­pay of Brighton). Clubs and commercial spon­sors can exert further pressure by looking at how to stop funding hate on social media plat­forms by strategically withdrawing advertising.

Online hate is a com­plex cultural and social problem. There is no magic wand to wave away the problem. As on the football pitch, success will come from creativi­ty, hard work and, above all, teamwork.