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10th August 2021
02:08pm BST
"They need to think again – we have investigators proactively seeking out abusive comments in connection to the match and, if they meet a criminal threshold, those posting them will be arrested.
https://twitter.com/TwitterUK/status/1425035341275320348"Our investigation is continuing at pace and we are grateful for those who have taken time to report racist posts to us."
But as private independent bodies, Social Media platforms are also under pressure to address the rampant discrimination on their platforms. Twitter has just concluded their investigation into the wave of online harassment, here's what they found: Twitter reports that their automated tools kicked in during the Euros final, where they were able to identify and remove 1622 abusive Tweets in the 24 hours that followed. They also state that only 2 per cent of those tweets made impressions greater than one thousand. https://twitter.com/TwitterUK/status/1425035344865644547 "While many have quite rightly highlighted the global nature of the conversation, it is also important to acknowledge the UK was - by far - the largest country of origin for the abusive Tweets we removed," they tweeted. Twitter continues to say that ID verification would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse, as 99 per cent of the users were unidentifiable. "Since our update in February, we’ve improved our proactive tools to identify racist abuse and removed just under 13,000 Tweets - of which 95 per cent were identified proactively," they said. Concerningly, and touching on the idea of censorship and what these private companies deem as 'harmful' the social media platform said: "Soon, we will be testing a new product feature that temporarily autoblocks accounts using harmful language." "There is no place for racist abuse on Twitter. Our aim is always that Twitter be used as a vehicle for every person to communicate safely. We’re determined to do all we can, along with our partners, to stop these abhorrent views and behaviours being seen on and off the platform," they conclude.
