Blues Trust Supports English Football’s Social Media Boycott

30 Apr 2021 | 2 comments

​The FA, Premier League, EFL, FA Women’s Super League, FA Women’s Championship, PFA, LMA, PGMOL, Kick It Out and the FSA are united in a social media boycott from 15.00 on Friday 30 April to 23.59 on Monday 3 May.

Blues Trust will be joining the boycott to show its support for this initiative which is in response to the ongoing and sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and many others connected to football.  We will not be using our Facebook and Twitter accounts during the boycott, we would encourage everyone to join the boycott and call on the social media companies to use the technology they have to root out on line racism and discrimination.

The boycott shows English football coming together to emphasise that social media companies must do more to eradicate online hate, while highlighting the importance of educating people in the ongoing fight against discrimination.

Trevor Birch, Chief Executive of the EFL said:

“EFL clubs have expressed a clear desire to take a united stand against abhorrent racist, discriminatory, and threatening abuse on social media platforms which we fully support alongside the rest of the football family.”

Sanjay Bhandari, Kick It Out Chair, said:

“Social media is now sadly a regular vessel for toxic abuse. This boycott signifies our collective anger at the damage this causes to the people who play, watch and work in the game. By removing ourselves from the platforms, we are making a symbolic gesture to those with power. We need you to act. We need you to create change. “We need social media companies to make their platforms a hostile environment for trolls rather than for the football family.”

Kevin Miles, Chief Executive of the Football Supporters’ Association said:

“The Football Supporters’ Association is fully behind the game’s efforts to stamp out online hate and discrimination and will join next weekend’s social media boycott. Much media attention has rightly focused on the vile abuse aimed at players, managers and journalists in the men’s and women’s game and we see that aimed at fans groups too. It has to stop”.

“Many of our most active fan groups tell us that they have received disgusting abuse when they are doing nothing more than trying to represent their supporter base. It’s a threat to the very existence of supporter organisations who are run by volunteers in their spare time. As fans we stand with players, managers, referees and all in the game in calling for the social media companies to step up.”

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2 Comments

  1. John

    Is this enough?

    No-one in their right mind would condone the online abuse that has been circulating recently, however is a 3 or 4 day boycott really enough? To be honest the only way to stop it is to stop using these social media sites completely.

    I appreciate that that means losing a certain freedom but I can’t think of any other way to stop these mindless idiots; having said that I’m sure they’d only find another way to abuse good people.

  2. WayCoolBlue

    It’s easy to sort out and stop.

    All we need to do is make anyone that’s wants to comment on posts from clubs have to sign up with their email address name postcode date of birth. So you make it that only registered members can comment. This can be linked to their football clubs website account information on the personal details. So it can be kept private.

    Then if they go on to abuse people cause problems use negative slurs they can be traced and dealt with.

    Even suspended from attending games. Depending on the seriousness the police can get involved.

    KRO

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Football Supporters' Association
The Football Supporters’ Federation and Supporters Direct have joined forces to become the Football Supporters’ Association

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