Three out of four Twitter accounts that sent explicit racial abuse to players last season have still not been shut down despite being reported, research commissioned by the PFA has shown.
A study done by the ethical data science company Signify found that there was a 48 per cent increase in racist online abuse in the second half of the 2020/21 season, with half the abusive accounts based in the UK.
Despite being reported to Twitter and other platforms promising tougher action against abusers, Signify’s artificial intelligence systems found that “more than three-quarters of the 359 accounts sending explicitly racist abuse to players were still on the platform”. The report adds: “As of July 2021, the vast majority of these accounts remain unsanctioned.”
Furthermore, only 56 per cent of the racially abusive posts identified had been removed. Some posts had remained live for months and others for the duration of the season.
Troy Deeney, the Watford captain and a PFA Players’ Board representative, said the findings showed social media platforms were “choosing not to” find solutions to online racist abuse.
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Deeney said: “Social media companies are huge businesses with the best tech people. If they wanted to find solutions to online abuse, they could.This report shows they are choosing not to.
“When is enough, enough? Now we know that abusive accounts and their affiliation to a club can be identified, more must be done to hold these people accountable.”
Signify’s study monitored more than six million social media posts on Twitter, looking at player accounts from the Premier League, Women’s Super League and EFL. The company reported 1,674 accounts to Twitter last season, a third of which were identified as being affiliated with a UK club.
Homophobic abuse was included in 33 per cent per cent of abusive posts.
Of 400 Premier League players who are on Twitter, 176 of them — 44 per cent — received abusive messages. About 20 per cent of all abuse was aimed at only four unidentified Premier League players.
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A Twitter spokesman said: “It is our top priority to keep everyone who uses Twitter safe and free from abuse. While we have made recent strides in giving people greater control to manage their safety, we know there is still work to be done.
“For example, in the hours after the Euro 2020 final, we swiftly removed over 1,000 tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules — the vast majority of which we detected proactively using technology.”
Maheta Molango, the PFA chief executive, believes that too much onus is placed on players to apply filters to block out the abuse.
“It is not down to the victim to push a button. We have made clear that it’s not good enough,” he said. “This work clearly shows that the technology exists to identify people behind offensive accounts.”
