18 Feb 2021 12:40:06
Racial abuse is becoming more and more prominent in football. At least it is a hot topic and being reported more - maybe it was always there.

How long until the ceremonial kneeling that has now made everyone feel they are taking "some action" against this disease needs to become something more tangible, like striking. I really feel that we are not far away from players on a big game day from deciding amongst themselves to walk off in a flash strike. Imagine the impact, massive game everyone kneels, then all players walk off leaving the commentators to try to explain what just happened. The gesture of kneeling has completely lost it's message.

1.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 13:16:43
The power lies with the top social media providers to make it harder, or impossible, for people to have untraceable accounts and hide behind them. I can't even understand why they are able to.

2.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 13:33:55
Spenno, it's because many people around the world don't have a valid i'd and are unable to obtain one. If social media platforms are to require i'd it will cut off millions of people and further favour the so called "privileged".

Also I don't think silencing the racists is a long term solution. A lot more needs to be done to educate people and stop this at its source so that the next generation aren't brought up in a world where such nastiness exists.

3.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 14:56:07
Surely with these absolutely massive social media companies having the top end algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools, it wouldn't be too difficult to put in a filter which prevents messages with racial abuse in them from being posted or seen by player targeted.

For example and i know they're not all like that i saw the abuse that Axel Tuanzebe received and it was literally a long string of monkey emojis. Surely some algorithm can be used which flags that as racial abuse and the message gets destroyed or held back.

4.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 15:39:05
It's a reflection of the deep divides within society currently. People are angry, confused and looking for people to blame, or just looking to feel good about themselves by elevating themselves above another group by putting that group down.

It doesn't matter what the divide is, gender, race, class, age, or political view point. At some point over the past 12 months the media have targeted one group or another. How many stories have we seen about "immigrants", "gender rights", "people on benefits", "youngsters", "Brexiters" or "Remainers", and how many of these articles are written in a positive manner?

It's always doom and gloom, the younger generation are ruining the country, or its immigrants, or benefit cheats, or LGBTQ.

The media run story after story blaming each group for all the wrongs in society. Then people are surprised when tensions form between groups of people.

When it comes to these social problems being seen in football it can be hard to tell if its life imitating art or art imitating life. I don't for one second believe football is a driver behind racism, it is one of the most inclusive sports in the world. The issue is that it attracts a lot of attention and not everyone who enjoys and follows football has the capacity or intelligence or are self aware enough to understand their actions and thoughts.

Their displaced anger at life and their current situations often lead to them to lashing out and people's skin tone is an easy target.

In terms of combating it, education, education, education. That is the only way to tackle the issue long term. You need to educate as many people as possible to as high a level as they can achieve.

While social media has to step up, if they can sensor a Presidents tweets then they can filter out criminal acts such as racial abuse if they want to. This sort of language and thoughts have no place in society and social media needs to take a stand.

The rest of us just need to make sure we are as respectful as we can be to each other, remember that our children will follow our example far more closely than they will follow our direction. Teaching your children about what is and isn't acceptable extends to being the example for them. Educate them, and anyone else you can, as best you can.

5.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 20:50:14
Verified accounts and AI blocking racism.
Pretty easy imo.

6.) 18 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 21:15:34
The players can do so much but ultimately when it comes to racist abuse in the grounds at matches the supporters have got to show the moral strength and point out the culprits to ground staff.

Then provided proven guilty maybe before each match a photo montage with names of racists could be shown on the big screen. Shame them and ban them for life from every football ground. All ticket holders should be easily tracked down to their address in this computer age.

As regards social media abuse the government has to pass laws to make the platforms like twitter instagram etc take proactive steps to trace the culprits. Also if the likes of google can spend millions developing algorithms allowing the public to be targeted to specific adverts to encourage spending on certain items then they should be compelled to devote more resources to weed out this rubbish and filth polluting the internet. Maybe a compulsory tax or a fine for every racist comment with fines increasing for each new post? A lot of liberals will bleat about it but affirmative action needs to be taken.

The long term solution though is to educate our children better and to make racism or discrimination of any form which is malicious to be as socially unacceptable as drink driving is now. It is impossible to eradicate but we all have a duty to do better and reduce it to the least possible.

7.) 19 Feb 2021
18 Feb 2021 23:19:51
These **** should be fined or put in prison. Everyone should be able to do their job without fear of receiving hateful abuse; racist or otherwise.