Instagram’s owners have taken five days to respond publicly to racism suffered by England star Jess Carter – and to raise issues about a Sky News interview with the head of the Football Association about the abuse.
While the FA and police had been in operational discussions with social media platforms, FA chief executive Mark Bullingham told Sky News on Thursday he had received no direct contact and said they had “avoided responsibility”.
In a statement breaking its silence, Meta told Sky News: “We’re surprised to read these comments since we have been working directly with the FA and UEFA both before and during this tournament.”
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Carter went public on Sunday with the online hate she has been facing throughout England’s defence of the European Championship title – removing herself from social media.
Sky News immediately asked Instagram owner Meta for comment, with follow-ups including DMs to Instagram head Adam Mosseri.
The response from Meta’s Press Office only came late on Friday to ask us to update our coverage of Thursday’s interview with Mr Bullingham “ASAP” as “it’s really important in the lead up to Sunday’s game that your readers know we’re firmly taking action on this matter”.
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We first asked Meta for comment before we aired an interview with Kick It Out chairman Sanjay Bhandari, who said social media companies have “actually gone backwards over the last four or five years, not forwards. It’s got worse on social media, not better”.
There was no response at the time to explain what Meta was doing – only to counter comments from the FA at the end of the week.
“No one should be subjected to racist abuse and we remove this content when we find it,” Meta asked us to attribute to an unnamed spokesperson.
“We’re surprised to read these comments [from Mr Bullingham] since we have been working directly with the FA and UEFA both before and during this tournament.
“We have proactively removed a number of violating comments and taken action against accounts which break our rules.
“We’ve also developed several tools to help protect people from having to see abuse, including Hidden Words which filters offensive comments and DMs.
“No one thing will stop racist behaviour overnight, but we’ll continue working to protect our community from abuse and cooperate with police investigations.”
The email from Meta ended: “Let me know if you have any questions.”
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Two hours after sending that, there was no response to follow-up requests to discuss the issues raised.
X still has not responded to Sky News after five days.
The Lionesses play Spain in Sunday’s Euros final.
