Euro 2020: 'More than 1,900 racist tweets removed'

TWITTER removed more than 1,900 racist and abusive tweets targeting England’s black footballers in the wake of England's Euro 2020 final defeat, the social media giant said on Tuesday (10).

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

Now, the social media giant 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.

“There is no place for racist abuse on Twitter and we are determined to do all we can to stop these abhorrent views and behaviours from being seen on our platform,” media reported quoted Twitter. 

'We can do better. We fully acknowledge our responsibility to ensure the service is safe - not just for the football community, but for all users.”

Twitter also claimed that 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, reports said.

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. However, the site and other social media giants were accused of being slow to respond to online abuse and removing it.

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

The revelation counters the calls of some campaigners who have called for ID verification to be introduced to social media to cut the spread of online abuse and help quickly identify those involved.

Twitter also said that “as long as racism exists offline, we will continue to see people try and bring these views online and it is a scourge technology cannot solve alone”.