Instagram to start banning accounts that send racist abuse in wake of footballer attacks

Instagram will start banning the accounts of people who send racist abuse in direct messages, following a high-profile spate of abuse aimed at professional footballers.

The Facebook-owned platform said that people sending repeated hate speech in private messages would have their account disabled. The company will also take down accounts set up to skirt around the messaging restrictions and remove accounts created with the sole purpose of sending abuse.

Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies have been criticised for their failure to curb racist abuse levelled at users for years.

Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford, Chelsea right-back and fellow England International Reece James and Rashford’s Man United teammates Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial were all subject to racist insults on Instagram late last month, which Rashford called “humanity and social media at its worst“.

Read More

Why racists are still hiding in plain sight on social media

“Yes, I’m a black man and I live every day proud that I am, he wrote on Twitter. “No one, or no one comment, is going to make me feel any different. So, sorry if you were looking for a strong reaction, you’re just simply not going to get it here.”

Years of online abuse

Black and minority ethnic footballers speaking out against racist slurs and insults on social media led to the Football Association (FA) backing the Professional Footballers’ Association-led #Enough campaign in 2018, and the two groups met with the Premier League, EFL and social media representatives in July 2019 to discuss how to tackle racism on online platforms. However, footballers and other high-profile athletes have continued to be targeted.

Instagram said in a statement that it did “not want” racist behaviour on its platform, adding that much of the abuse takes place in people’s direct message inboxes which are harder to police than public-facing comments.

“Currently, when someone sends direct messages that break our rules, we prohibit that person from sending any more messages for a set period of time. Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account,” it said.

Read More

Tyrone Mings: ‘I’m no longer surprised when a football fan calls me a n****r’

“We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages.”

‘Improved policies’

A Facebook spokesperson told i the company would not specify how many times messages had to be sent before an account was shut down to avoid users gaming the systems.

Detection of abuse is contingent on users reporting it to the app, as Instagram doesn’t use algorithmic detection in private messages, they added.

“Because direct messages are for private conversations, we don’t use technology to proactively detect content like hate speech or bullying the same way we do in other places. So we need people to report those messages in app,” they added.

Read More

Racism on social media: Stop saying ‘enough is enough’ and actually do something about it

“It’s also why we have given creator and business accounts the option to switch off DMs from people they don’t follow – and we hope to make them available to everyone soon. And why we’re currently working on a new feature designed to help prevent people from having to see abusive messages in the first place.”

Instagram said it would cooperate with law enforcement and respond to legal requests for information where valid.

“For too long the world’s most popular and powerful social media companies have failed to tackle the stream of horrific racist attacks on their platforms,” said Digital Secretary Oliver Dowden.

“I welcome Instagram’s improved policies but racist abuse is still a fact of life for too many people and more has to be done across the board to stamp it out.”

…→