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Football

17th Oct 2022

Meta say they were unable to take action on account that racially abused Ivan Toney

Callum Boyle

Toney shared screenshots of a racially abusive message he received

Meta, the parent company of Instagram, have said they were unable to take action on the account that racially abused Ivan Toney as it hadn’t been reported through their in-programme tools.

Toney was the story of the night last Friday after two goals on his 100th appearance for Brentford helped them to a 2-0 win against Brighton and Hove Albion.

Unfortunately, his performance on the pitch wasn’t the talking point as Toney shared screenshots of a racially abusive message he  received on Instagram after the game.

The 26-year-old has posted a screenshot to Twitter which said: “I wasn’t even going to post this but I woke up angry…”

However Meta have confirmed that they were unable to take any action on the post in question, but had removed two other accounts belonging to the same person who sent the message.

The platform have also confirmed that they have reached out to Toney personally and offered their support.

“No one should have to experience racist abuse and sending messages like this is completely against our rules,” a spokesperson told Sky Sports.

“DMs are private spaces, which means we can’t take action unless someone reports the message to us in-app – but we also want to help protect people from having to see this abuse in the first place.

“That’s why we’ve developed our Hidden Words feature which filters offensive comments and DMs, and we’re working closely with football bodies to help players turn these tools on.

“No one thing will fix this overnight, but we’ll continue to work to help protect our community from abuse, and to respond quickly to valid legal requests to support police investigations.”

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