Washington (AFP)
Twitter and Facebook assured Monday that they were working to suppress racist comments on their platforms against three black players of the England team following the loss of the country in the final of Euro football.
These insults against Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, which the police have opened an investigation, have been unanimously condemned, from Prime Minister Boris Johnson to coach Gareth Southgate who has described them as "unforgivable".
"The heinous racist slurs directed at England players last night have absolutely no place on Twitter," said a spokesperson for the San Francisco-based messaging service.
"In the past 24 hours, thanks to the combination of automated checks (...) and human checks, we have quickly deleted over 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules," he added.
Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, had already underlined for its part to have "quickly removed comments and accounts insulting to English footballers", and promised to "continue to take action against those who break our rules".
“Nothing will solve this problem overnight, but we are committed to protecting our users from insults,” Facebook said.
The three particularly targeted players entered late in the game and missed their shot on goal, sealing England's defeat against Italy (1-1 ap, 3-2 tab).
UK Culture and Sports Minister Oliver Dowden called on social media groups to tackle racism online more.
Otherwise, he warned, "our new bill on online security will impose fines of up to 10% of their global income."
© 2021 AFP