London (PA Media/dpa) – Twitter says Britain was «by far» the main origin of racist posts aimed at England players after the Euro 2020 final.
The Three Lions’ European Championship run ended in a penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy in July, with Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka failing to convert their spot-kicks
The trio were subjected to online abuse in the aftermath, with police
last week confirming they had so far made 11 arrests.
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 on Tuesday.
«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.
«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.»