Racism has raised its ugly head in football time and again. Despite several actions taken by FIFA, players have been routinely subjected to racist abuse from the stands as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
It might not seem like a huge leap in the fight against racism, but the #Enough campaign by professional footballers in England and Wales is a firm step in the right direction. The players, led by the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), boycotted social media for 24 hours on Friday, to protest against racism in the game and the response from the social networks to the complaints. It started at 09:00 BST on Friday and ran until 09:00 BST on Saturday. Players posted the 'Enough' picture and the accompanying message "We are making a stand against racist abuse' on their social media platforms.
FIFA backed the full-day social media boycott and revealed its plans for a new global campaign to eliminate racial discrimination in football.
This season witnessed a number of high-profile incidents in domestic and international matches, which led to the boycott. Earlier this week, Manchester United defender Ashley Young was racially abused on Twitter following the team's defeat in their Champions League quarterfinal. In response, Chris Smalling, a fellow United defender said that, “Throughout my career I have developed a thick skin against verbal abuse, as in most cases, it was justified as just a ‘part of the game’ but the time has come for Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to consider regulating their channels”.
#enough pic.twitter.com/RBk2V4vCR3
— Chris Smalling (@ChrisSmalling) April 19, 2019
The Euro 2020 qualifier in Montenegro witnessed multiple players, including Danny Rose, being subjected to racist chanting. “I don’t want any future players to go through what I have [been] though in my career,” said Rose. “Collectively, we are simply not willing to stand by while too little is done by football authorities and social media companies to protect players from this disgusting abuse.” Troy Deeney, Watford captain, who disabled comments on his Instagram as a result of abuse earlier this month, said: “On Friday we are sending a message to anyone that abuses players - or anyone else - whether from the crowd or online, that we won't tolerate it within football.”
PFA said the boycott was the “first step in a longer campaign to tackle racism in football”.
“The boycott acts as a show of unity by the players, and a call for stronger action to be taken by social networks and footballing authorities in response to racist abuse both on and off the pitch,” the PFA said in a statement.
Twitter, earlier this week, said that it uses “proprietary-built internal technology to proactively find abusive content”. When asked about the posts and those responsible for them, Twitter said: “We don’t comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.” The company said it “introduced over 70 changes to make the service safer, including investment in better machine learning technology to help us proactively limit the spread of abusive content”. However, it refused to explain how the abusive tweets had remained on the platform for so long.
