A petition to make ID a requirement for social media accounts has hit more than 650,000 signatures in the wake of trolls targeting England’s Euro 2020 stars.
Started by model Katie Price, and backed by other celebrities including Love Island presenter Laura Whitmore, it calls for personal accounts on sites such as Facebook and Twitter to be linked to a verified form of identification.
This would then prevent, the petition says, ‘anonymised harmful activity, providing traceability if an offence occurs’.
England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were racially abused on social media after missing penalties during the Euro 2020 final on Sunday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson then held showdown talks with social media firms yesterday, demanding they ‘up their game’ over the abuse suffered by the Three Lions stars.
A petition to make ID a requirement for social media accounts has hit more than 650,000 signatures in the wake of trolls targeting England’s Euro 2020 stars
England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka (pictured) were racially abused on social media after missing penalties during the Euro 2020 final on Sunday
Whitmore, 36, shared a link and wrote to her 1.4 million Instagram followers: ‘The fact that anyone can say anything online without any accountability has never been right.
‘We all have platforms no matter how many followers or who you are, use it to make the world that little bit better.’
Former model and reality star Price, 43, started the petition after her son Harvey faced abuse online.
Harvey, 19, was born with septo-optic dysplasia, Prader-Willi syndrome, autism and a learning disability.
In the petition details, Price claims the Government’s Online Safety Bill ‘doesn’t go far enough in making online abuse a specific criminal offence’.
The Bill will put a new legal duty of care on online companies to protect their UK users from harm, including people receiving abusive comments, threats and harassment online.
A Government response to the petition on May 5 said legislation would ‘address anonymous harmful activity’.
But it added: ‘User ID verification for social media could disproportionately impact vulnerable users and interfere with freedom of expression.’
On Monday, Girls Aloud star Nicola Roberts also criticised the Bill, saying it fails to stop abusive web-users from rejoining social media platforms after being banned.
Yesterday, the PM’s spokesman explained how Mr Johnson used the meeting with social media giants to ‘reiterate the urgent need for action’ after the vile trolling.
Mr Johnson told Cabinet earlier that the racists who targeted Three Lions stars Rashford, Sancho and teenager Saka online had emerged from ‘the darkest recesses of the Internet’.
Ministers are pressing platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to help in hunting down those responsible so they can ‘make an example’ of them.
The premier’s spokesman said: ‘We expect social media firms to do everything they can to identify these people.’
Representatives from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, Microsoft and Amazon Kids UK are understood to have took part in the meeting, which was apparently in the diary before the row erupted.
The trio were targeted after missing their penalties as England suffered Euro 2020 final heartache against Italy.
Twitter says it has since banned more than 1,000 posts following a flurry of abusive messages aimed at England stars.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, also described the online attacks as ‘abhorrent’ and said its team were working to remove the comments.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson held showdown talks with social media firms yesterday, demanding they ‘up their game’ over the abuse suffered by the Three Lions stars
But Government is pushing social media companies to hand over details of abusive users to the authorities in a ‘more timely manner’.
‘We want real-life consequences for the people who are tweeting this abuse,’ a source told the Times.
‘We need to find out who these people are and make examples of them. This is not beyond their (social media firms’) capabilities.’
Earlier this week, Harry Kane sent a clear message to those behind the vile racist by saying: ‘We don’t want you.’
The England skipper condemned the abuse as ‘vile’, adding that the players, who were seen visibly distraught after missing penalties in the shoot-out defeat to Italy, ‘deserve support and backing’.
And in a stinging message, he called out those behind the messages, saying they were ‘not England fans’.
Meanwhile, teammate Tyrone Mings launched an astonishing broadside at Priti Patel by accusing the Home Secretary of ‘stoking the fire’ of racism by labelling the team’s taking of the knee as ‘gesture politics’.
The defender said the Conservative minister had ‘no right’ to condemn the online abuse against Rashford, Sancho and Saka.
Ms Patel described the trolling as ‘disgusting’, as she joined the nationwide condemnation of those behind the messages.
But, replying to the Tweet, the England defender said: ‘You don’t get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as ‘Gesture Politics’ and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing we’re campaigning against, happens.’
The Home Secretary had said prior to the tournament that she ‘did not support’ those engaging in ‘that type of gesture politics’, when asked if she supported stars taking the knee.
And she said it was up to fans whether they booed the gesture during England’s Euro 2020 campaign.
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has been contacted for comment on the petition.
Instagram claims monkey emojis ‘DON’T breach race rules’ as Twitter removes 1,000 racist posts after appalling abuse of England stars – and MPs say social media firms need to do more
Instagram users reporting racist comments directed at black England football stars after Sunday night’s Euro 2020 defeat claim the social media site has failed to remove monkey emojis, because they ‘don’t breach the rules’.
Conscientious social media users launched into ‘hour-long’ mass reporting sessions in order to flag the abusive posts – directed at Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka – to moderators.
But the Instagram users say they later received messages back from the Facebook-owned site saying the posts will not be removed.
The messages from Instagram say the posts reported by the users are ‘not in breach’ of its community guidelines.
Fans have since taken to Twitter – which today revealed it had removed 1,000 racists posts – to share their anger at Instagram’s decision.
One user, Emily May, said on Twitter: ‘I’ve spent an hour today reporting racist accounts. But according to Instagram monkey emojis and the N word are okay.’
Another said: ‘Instagram said that the banana and ape and monkey comments on Saka’s photo weren’t against community guidelines. Come get your algorithm, Instagram.’
Today Instagram’s owner Facebook condemned the abuse and said the site was ‘committed to keeping our community safe from abuse’.
It is understood the site takes ‘context’ into account when reviewing content containing emojis that could be ‘mundane’.
But a spokesperson told MailOnline that the emojis ‘definitely do’ breach Instagram’s guidelines when used as they have been against England’s football stars.
Royalty, leading politicians including the Prime Minister and even the Archbishop of Canterbury slammed trolls who targeted Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho (pictured) and Bukayo Sako after last night’s Euro 2020 heartbreak.
Meanwhile, Times Radio journalist Kait Borsay, suggested that it may be ‘harder’ for Instagram’s reporting system to pick up the comments as easily due to them being ’emojis’ rather than written words.
Facebook accepted that its automated system may struggle to pick up these emojis, but that, if reported, such comments would be passed to one of its 35,000 moderators to review – and would be in breach of community guidelines.
A spokesperson told MailOnline: ‘No one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere, and we don’t want it on Instagram.
‘We quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers last night and we’ll continue to take action against those that break our rules.
‘In addition to our work to remove this content, we encourage all players to turn on Hidden Words, a tool which means no one has to see abuse in their comments or DMs.
‘No one thing will fix this challenge overnight, but we’re committed to keeping our community safe from abuse.’
It comes as Twitter today revealed how it has removed more than 1,000 racist posts targeting England football stars following last night’s penalty shoot-out defeat to Italy at Wembley.
A spokesperson for the social media site said: ‘The abhorrent racist abuse directed at England players last night has absolutely no place on Twitter.
‘In the past 24 hours, through a combination of machine learning based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1,000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules – the vast majority of which we detected ourselves proactively using technology.
‘We will continue to take action when we identify any Tweets or accounts that violate our policies.
‘We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our partners across the football community to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviour – both online and offline.’