Philip Neville Asks Footballers to Boycott Social Media, here’s why

Former Manchester United player and currently head coach to England women’s team; Philip Neville has called on footballers to boycott social media following recent racist attacks on Manchester United midfielder; Paul Pogba.

This was as a result of him (Pogba) missing a penalty in his side’s 1-1 draw with Wolves Football Club on Monday.

“I’ve had it with my players on social media, the Premier League and the Championship have had it. We have to take drastic measures now as a football community. So let’s send a powerful message—come off social media for six months. Let’s see the effect it has on these companies,” said Neville as reported by BBC News.

He said social media companies need to do more to tackle bullying and abuse online. He claims that they don’t do anything other than sending you an email reply after contacting them, — saying “they’ll investigate”. But again nothing happens.

So what did these companies; Twitter and Facebook mainly, have to say.

According to BBC’s report, micro-blogging website; Twitter it strongly condemns the abuse and permanently suspended a series of accounts for violating its hateful conduct policy.

Facebook on the other hand said there’s no place for racism on their platforms and have invested heavily in developing tools and technologies to prevent bullying and harassment. They further said people who repeatedly break their guidelines are permanently banned.

Social media has and is always a place of cyber bulling, racism or abusive behavior and the stop of this is inevitable.

Recently in Uganda, a freshman at Makerere University; Henry Ssuubi Kiyimba happened to be a victim of cyber bulling, after a tweet shared ‘dissing’ him carrying a metallic suitcase to campus. However, the viral tweet turned out to be changer for Ssuubi as he received support/help from different people to help him get around the university.

On the other hand, Pogba’s team-mates have criticized the abuse of their fellow teammate.

The team’s center-back; Harry Maguire called on social media companies to “stop these trolls”, while forward; Marcus Rashford said “enough now, this needs to stop”.

The team said its working to identify those responsible for the racist abuse directed at Pogba.

“The individuals who expressed these views do not represent the values of our great club and it is encouraging to see the vast majority of our fans condemn this on social media also,” read a United statement.

“We will work to identify the few involved in these incidents and take the strongest course of action available to us. We also encourage social media companies to take action in these cases.”

This article is written with inputs from BBC Sports