Social media sites under pressure to strip anonymity from users

Social media companies have come under increasing pressure to remove racist abuse from their platforms after widespread outrage at the treatment of England footballers.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met social media companies – including representatives from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok – on Tuesday afternoon for talks focused on the fallout from England’s defeat to Italy in Sunday's Euro 2020 final.

Mr Johnson said in the House of Commons on Wednesday new legislation would give the government the power to fine social media companies up to 10 per cent of their global revenues if they do not get hate off their platforms.

He also said the government would change existing football banning orders to ensure that people found guilty of racist abuse against players are banned from games.

"What we're doing is today taking practical steps to ensure that the Football Banning Order regime is changed so that if you were guilty ... of racist abuse online of footballers then you will not be going to the match, no ifs, no buts, no exemptions and no excuses," he said.

Earlier, the prime minister's spokesman said the online abuse of black players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka was “utterly disgraceful and had emerged from the dark spaces of the internet”.

He said big tech bosses needed to “up their game” in identifying perpetrators of abuse.

The controversy reignited calls for the government to remove online anonymity before introducing a new bill forcing social media companies to clamp down on racism.

The Online Safety Bill includes a “duty of care”, with social media companies required to take measures to tackle illegal abuse.

The regulator Ofcom would be given the power to fine companies that fail to take action up to £18 million ($24m) or up to 10 per cent of global revenue.

Centre for Digital Hate identified 105 accounts on Instagram that had directed racist abuse at Rashford, Sancho and Saka in the hours after the final. Analysis showed 59 of those were set up outside Britain.

People across the UK spoke out in support of the footballers, including in Rashford's hometown of Withington in Manchester, where a mural of the footballer was daubed with offensive graffiti.

England footballer Harry Maguire said on Wednesday social media companies should be forced to verify the identities behind every account.

“Something needs to be done. The companies need to verify every account,” he said.

“It is too easy to troll and abuse.”

Maguire said it was far too easy to be racist on those platforms and get away with it.

Britain's main opposition Labour party called for online racists to be banned from attending football matches.

It wants the courts to be given new powers to bring perpetrators to justice.

Only those who shout abuse in football grounds can be barred from attending games.

Shadow Culture Secretary Jo Stevens said the government’s plans failed to tackle the problem.

“The racists who have been abusing England players online should be banned from football grounds,” she said. “They do not deserve to be anywhere near a game of football.”

Social media companies were also under pressure from a petition on the UK government website calling for a mandatory verification of a user’s identity before an account could be created.

It has attracted more than 666,000 signatures, with tens of thousands signing after the England v Italy match.

The government previously said user ID verification could “disproportionately impact vulnerable users and interfere with freedom of expression”.

Critics of social media verification say the Arab uprising in 2010 could not have happened if users had been forced to identify themselves.

A separate petition to ban racists permanently from football matches passed 1 million signatures in two days.

Football fans Shaista Aziz, Amna Abdullatif and Huda Jawad, who created the petition, said England's Football Association and the government should set “very clear red lines” on racist abuse.

Meanwhile, influential Conservative MP Steve Baker said the racism storm "may be a decisive moment" for the party.

He said his party should rethink its attitude towards 'taking the knee' – a symbolic gesture against racism practised by many footballers in the seconds before matches kick off.

“Much as we can’t be associated with calls to defund the police, we urgently need to challenge our own attitude to people taking a knee,” he said.

His intervention comes as Home Secretary Priti Patel was accused by England footballer Tyrone Mings of “stoking the fire” of racism after she dismissed taking the knee as “gesture politics”.

"You don't get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as 'gesture politics' and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we're campaigning against, happens,” he said.

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