Twitter says UK ‘by far’ main origin of racist posts after Euro final

Twitter says the United Kingdom was “by far” the main origin of racist posts aimed at England players after the Euro 2020 final.

The Three Lions’ fine European Championship run ended in a heart-breaking penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy, with Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka failing to convert their spot-kicks.

The trio were subjected to sickening online abuse in the aftermath, with police last week confirming they had so far made 11 arrests during their investigation of online racial abuse of England players.

Twitter has now shared an overview of their analysis of “the abhorrent racist abuse” directed at players on the platform around last month’s final.

“On the night of the Euros final, our automated tools kicked in immediately, and ensured we identified and removed 1,622 abusive Tweets in the 24 hours that followed,” Twitter UK posted.

“Only two per cent of the tweets we removed generated more than 1,000 impressions.

“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.

“Our data suggests that ID verification would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse from happening – as of the permanently suspended accounts, 99 per cent of account owners were identifiable.

“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.

“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.”