Isn’t it time social media was brought under control - dreadful abuse after England football defeat.

Going against the grain here.

I think we have sufficient controls over free speech in every aspect of our lives. There will always be obnoxious, vile people using social media as a platform for instance, but the answer is to scroll past, or report. To police even more aspects of our freedoms than the Westminster government has already done and is planning more of, would simply ensure that in 20 years time todays kids and their kids will be living in a totalitarian dictatorship.

Personally I'd rather be offended by some things than lose my right to express my own views.

Elleee

For me, this tweet from Tyrone Ming's says it all and I agree with every word

I absolutely, totally agree with this.

Sometimes I’m ashamed to be called British. This is one of the times.
Awful. Just awful
And booing other nations national anthems too

I always wonder if those posting disgusting comments would ever actually have the nerve to go and say the same thing to people's faces. I doubt it.
I am one of the admins on a community noticeboard on Facebook and it never fails to surprise me the abuse that some people think is quite acceptable to post in reply to some queries that people ask about the local area.
One of the biggest problems is that anyone can hide behind a completely fake name to set up a Facebook account and there is absolutely no way that any of them can be checked and confirmed they are correct once the account holder changes all of their settings to private.
In some sick way, attaching their brain to a keyboard for some people seems to give them the feeling of power and so gives them some right to put just what they think, with absolutely no filter. There is currently no recourse against the so called anonymous sadly and it's time that the social media, as well as governments worldwide need to step up and make it illegal to post abusive comments as companies such as Facebook do absolutely nothing, beyond claiming reported posts are not against "community standards"

there is a petition;

petition.parliament.uk/signatures/115570988/signed

Make verified ID a requirement for opening a social media account.
Make it a legal requirement when opening a new social media account, to provide a verified form of ID. Where the account belongs to a person under the age of 18 verify the account with the ID of a parent/guardian, to prevent anonymised harmful activity, providing traceability if an offence occurs.

poshpaws

Going against the grain here.

I think we have sufficient controls over free speech in every aspect of our lives. There will always be obnoxious, vile people using social media as a platform for instance, but the answer is to scroll past, or report. To police even more aspects of our freedoms than the Westminster government has already done and is planning more of, would simply ensure that in 20 years time todays kids and their kids will be living in a totalitarian dictatorship.

Personally I'd rather be offended by some things than lose my right to express my own views.

I agree with that poshpaws. And no one is forced to use/look at social media anyway.

I am not sure the social media as such can do much more than they already are doing.

I use facebook very little and none of the other media such as twitter or instagram, so this question may be naive, but can you not block a sender on your own account, as you can if you receive an e-mail from a dubious source?

My attitude is that we all need to make a stand, by demonstrating that the fact one is anonymous does not mean one can be as abusive as possible.

We also need to speak out against racism and other unacceptable attitudes whenever and wherever we meet them.

This can take a fair amount of moral courage, but is one of the few ways we can change attitudes.

If you know who the person is who made an abusive post then you can forward that person's post, name and address to the cyber division of the police or to the procurator fiscal and let them decide whether there are grounds for legal proceedings against the person.

What can be done for children on social media? By grandparents?

Don't post pictures of your grandchildren online. Don't mention where they live online. Don't name their school online. Help their parents teach them about online security. Don't ever try to contact them on social media without their parents knowledge and permission.

If children are overly vulnerable to social media, it's because so many parents and other family members are not doing their job. No child under 13 needs a social media account. No child under 10 needs unsupervised access to the internet. ALL children need to be taught how to use the internet and social media safely and wisely.

I see children who can't even read and write with their own phones and tablets. Probably without any decent parental control. This is where the problem starts.

I stay off Fbook and Twitter and I only use Gransnet because we know the boundaries and would never dream of being racist, homophobic, etc on this site as we all know someone would jump in and get it stopped immediately. The people using Fbook to bully others are just idiotic, ignorant cowards, but it is a big problem that it's not monitored enough and hateful posts are not taken down quick enough. Its time something is done about these big social media companies and quickly. I been told about things put on Tictoc that would make your eyes water, they can keep it, not interested.

I don't agree with the petition to make it mandatory to provide ID before opening a social media account, thus way lies control of what we read, see, hear, learn. Yes, there has been a lot of disgusting stuff on social media this weekend, and yes, it has disgusted me, but vile people are always with us, it is unfair to blame social media. The good thing about this weekend's episode is that it has brought racism to the fore, it is being discussed on tv, radio and presumably in newspapers, hopefully this, and the millions of people who have posted supportive messages to show that we are not all like this, will help the young men targeted, and will make people think twice about what they post.

A long time ago ??

GillT57 - in your comment you said:

"I don't agree with the petition to make it mandatory to provide ID before opening a social media account, thus way lies control of what we read, see, hear, learn."

At the moment we appear to be controlled by the broadcast and print media - which I grant has a regulatory body, and covered by libel and copyright laws. We also have the choice to buy or not buy a Murdoch control "news" outlet - but why would it be so wrong to provide some ID before opening a social media account?

Yes, I know you don't need ID to buy a paper - although you do to watch/listen to the BBC.

Social media is unregulated out there on the Internet, and precious little is or has been done by Government to regulate it - maybe we should start on Gransnet, by requiring the removal of anonymity, but keeping the same rules for joining this community??

If the media would just stop talking about it, maybe just maybe we ourselves would be unaware and so the objective would be nullified. Also why are the celebrities on social media anyway, only for their own promotion. Just close their own accounts and then the abusers wouldn’t have anywhere to post.

Lucca

I’ve just had a long call from my son in Sydney saying exactly this. Also saying how disgusted he was at the behaviour of some English fans generally but more concerned of course with the hideous hideous racist abuse. Who are these people,??? But twitter, Facebook etc need to get their act together and be held accountable.
Sadly, money talks.

I like the idea of Twitter, Facebook, etc. being held accountable for what is said/documented on their platforms.

Maybe we should start a campaign to re-nation alive water supply in the UK - especially after Southern Water were found to have deliberately dumped sewage into that supply.

Or, perhaps we all think it is OK to make a profit out of the essential ingredients for human life - maybe we should start charging for the air we breathe, and sell parts of the country to the banks and investment houses?

Yes, yes, yes. Time these armchair racists were held to account. Preferably a large fine.

Also why are the celebrities on social media anyway, only for their own promotion. Nice little bit of victim blaming there, do you think women who go out at night and get attacked have only themselves to blame?

Following all the messages about this item, most of which are disconcerted with social media, I personally am not quite sure whether you all are not talking about ANTI SOCIAL media.
Please can someone put the situation clear for me.
Thanks in anticipation
Regards Michael C.

It’s very odd that companies such as FB find it hard to control hate speech yet they have have no problem whatsoever with bombarding me with adverts related to something which I’ve said to my Dh just minutes before.

GrannyGravy, just because the accounts are ‘abroad’ doesn’t mean that the account holders are. They are just cowardly bullies.

Football has already taken issue with social media by blocking them for 80 hours over the first May Bank Holiday. The initiative was taken by the Premier League, all of English Football, and Kick it Out.

It was demanded that social media companies such as Face Book and Twitter do more to stop online abuse. There should be fresh measures to tackle hate and discrimination including a requirement for social media giants to display a warning if a user writes an abusive message they will be asked to enter their personal details if they wish to send it. It was also asked they do detailed quarterly reports outlining the efforts they have made to prevent abuse so they could be more accountable.

This boycott was joined by cricket, Rugby and tennis as well as Sky Sports and the Guardian Sports. Every football club I know, including ours followed this boycott, with the message “Social media companies must do more to #stoponlineabuse. Join us and switch off too as we collectively demand change”.

There was a Guardian article on 28th April. No comment from Facebook. Over 2 months later we have more terrible abuse. We need to get the whole country to boycott for 80 hours.

Stop using Twitter.
Don't read it, don't post on it.
Simple.

Surely in this day and age it is not beyond a computer whizz kid to design an algorithm that detects certain words and flag them up as potentially hate/race/sex issues. But then of course you would get the ‘freedom of speech’ people shouting about their rights too ??‍♀️

GillT57 nothing to do with victim blaming at all, and getting drunk and attacked is nothing to do with social media. Why put yourself in danger or the firing line if you dont have to,

I heard yesterday Facebook blocked these terrible things which were written by the scum of the earth. As the PM said last night they should crawl back under the stones they came from.

Definitely yes