From 3pm on Friday 30th April, until 23:59pm on Monday 3rd May, we will join clubs, players, organisations and fellow fans sites in boycotting all of our social media platforms in response to the ongoing online abuse that continues to go unpunished.
For too long now, faceless accounts have been able to send vile racist or discriminatory comments towards other users on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other platforms without any repercussions.
This must stop and all of us at NUFCBlog.co.uk join others in demanding change from social media companies.
As you know, we have a game this weekend, facing Arsenal at St James’ Park at 2pm on Sunday. We will continue to post articles on this site both before and after the match, however none of these will be posted to Facebook and Twitter – meaning fans and followers must come directly to NUFCBlog.co.uk to read our content over the coming days.
Let’s hope this action and boycott over the bank holiday weekend allows social media companies to enforce the following:
- Apply preventative filtering and blocking measures to stop discriminatory abuse being sent or seen
- Be accountable for safety on platforms and protect users by implementing effective verification
- Ensure real-life consequences for online discriminatory abuse: ban perpetrators, stop account re-registration and support law enforcement
- A warning message to be displayed if a user writes an abusive message and need to enter personal data if they wish to send the message
- Platforms to have robust, reliable and quick measures in place if abusive material is sent or posted
- Transparent quarterly reports on the work social media companies are doing, internally and externally, to eradicate abuse on their platforms
