Arsenal will take part in a social media blackout next weekend as they join forces with The FA, Premier League, EFL, Women’s Super League and various other football bodies to raise awareness of online abuse.
The Gunners’ social platforms across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, YouTube and LinkedIn will not post anything between 3pm on Friday, 30 April and midnight on Monday, 4 May.
The boycott, which comes a month after the club launched their #stoponlineabuse campaign, will include Arsenal’s fixture at Newcastle United on Sunday.
In a statement, the club wrote: “While we realise social media is one of the ways we can feel closer to our supporters across the world, across football and beyond we’ve seen an online world poisoned by hateful, racist and discriminatory words. We have seen our own players and legends and many of the Arsenal family receiving abuse and we cannot underestimate the impact it has. A boycott action from football in isolation will not eliminate the issue of online discriminatory abuse, but it will continue the emphasis on asking social media companies to do more to eradicate online hate.
“In February 2021, English football outlined its requests of social media companies, urging filtering, blocking and swift takedowns of offensive posts, an improved verification process and re-registration prevention, plus active assistance for law enforcement agencies to identify and prosecute originators of illegal content. While some progress has been made, the weekend’s boycott will serve as a reminder of the requests.
“While football takes a stand, together we urge the UK Government to ensure its Online Safety Bill will bring in strong legislation to make social media companies more accountable for what happens on their platforms, as discussed at the DCMS Online Abuse roundtable earlier this week.”
In response to the sustained discriminatory abuse received online by players and others connected to the game, English football will unite for a social media boycott from 15:00 BST on Fri 30 April to 23:59 BST on Mon 3 May
Full story ➡️ https://t.co/YINlwNb7d0#NoRoomForRacism pic.twitter.com/vp6aVovqIS
— Premier League (@premierleague) April 24, 2021
The Premier League’s CEO, Richard Masters, also released a statement:
“Racist behaviour of any form is unacceptable and the appalling abuse we are seeing players receive on social media platforms cannot be allowed to continue.
“The Premier League and our clubs stand alongside football in staging this boycott to highlight the urgent need for social media companies to do more in eliminating racial hatred.
“We will not stop challenging social media companies and want to see significant improvements in their policies and processes to tackle online discriminatory abuse on their platforms.”
Enjoyed your observations from the anti Kroenke demo from last Friday.
Ah, taking a moral stand – this is awkward
I think you meant joining a moral stand for public relations.
It’s gonna make a huge difference and I imagine all the online scum will not do it again when they all clubs back on Twitter in a few days. Well done FA and all premiership clubs.
😳
I remember watching a psychologist talk about how the media should treat school shootings to not inspire future nutcases. They said it basically shouldn’t be reported at all as the attention it gets only makes likeminded people think that it’s a great way to make a name for themselves. I can’t help but feel BBC don’t help the situation when they make a headline out of every single tweet that is racist. But then again, we can’t close our eyes and ears to it all. I’m not sure what the solution is but I know people and some of these… Read more »
Totally agree, the problem is media not just social media.
I think you forgot to enclose your post between the tags [sarcasm] and [/sarcasm]
😜
Doing nothing would you rather? Illuminate us with a proposal.
Here’s a proposal, try a sense of humour 😂
You sound like a really fun guy. A single one probably but a fun one.
This isn’t about the online scum.
This is about the tech companies who refuse to do anything about the online scum losing revenue for a few days.
The pressure is on the rich fucks who could change things, not the racist pricks.
Life without social media works really well. I gave up social media last year and don’t miss it at all. Maybe a permanent break from it is what we all need.
I would add the news media as well. I have stopped watching news channels, the level of bias is unbelievable. Memes are the best source of news 🙂
It’s not the level of bias per say it’s the level of pure depressing negativity. Good news doesn’t sell papers as they say
You just need multiple, varied sources. Its important to find out what’s going on around the world.
One thing doesn’t need to be related to another. Don’t compare this to the super League situation. It’s not really enough but it’s impossible to change what is in people’s hearts. This will just continue to happen and 1/3 of the fans who post on here will continue to do it.
I don’t really agree, I think it’s all related. The club joins these initiatives to protect or enhance its “image” and project its values on society in general. Right now, its image is so f**led in my eyes that I barely believe a word that comes out of their mouths. I’m sure people at the club believe and support in this initiative and others (as they should), but I’ll bet my house that some tosser said “well it’ll work out nicely for us to be off social media for a few days anyway”, while stroking a white cat and laughing… Read more »
So you’ve basically just said 1/3 of Arsenal fans are racist. Arsenal has one of the most diverse fan bases in world football & the club has been ahead of the game in previous years.
I do not agree with your statement
“Won’t somebody think of the fans of the future!”
Thinking of doing an all media boycott till the season is over and get all my bad news in one hit or be pleasantly surprised if winning the EL rather than being annoyed at weekly foot shooting.
Arsenal need to be more specific here about what type of abuse their trying to eradicate If they’re talking groups that are currently protected by the equalities act, then it’s absolutely right that we demand that laws are enacted If they’re talking threatening behaviour, then they’re absolutely right in demanding current laws that are there to protect everyone, are enacted But free speech includes the right to offend We need to learn from history here, policing speech only leads to two bad outcomes Authoritarianism + Civil unrest If people aren’t free to air their grievances, and feel their concerns are… Read more »
Spot on Rich
The people who are disliking Rich’s comment are cancel culture promoting lefties who think people should be just shut down instead of giving them a chance to make mistakes and learn. The fact that the guy pointed out that he favours the social media boycott due to vile and inhuman abuse is put to a side as these get-offended-for-everyone types are looking to curb free speech and lynch people for just words whilst there are actual infringements in personal rights happening every day that they don’t bat an eye to.
The cancel culture that froze Kaepernick out of NFL wasn’t leftist and the owner of your club was part of it.
Colin was on the second tier QBs and he had to resort to those antics to resurrect his career.
Do you remember how the right vilified Maryln Manson and tried to cancel him for being responsible for columbine, or various outrages against comic books, or video games, or salman rushdie, or monty python. Or literally anytime someone has spoken truth to power.
Grow up.
“Make mistakes and learn” – exactly. The issue is, plenty of people will fight tooth and nail for their right NOT to learn. I have very little sympathy who insist on posting things they have many times been told are offensive while arguing that those offended by their posts are offended too easily and thus don’t matter. How can you learn if you don’t listen? Pro tip – if you’re going to include whataboutism in your post, try to spend 30 seconds googling an example rather than make a generic statement like “there are actual infringements in personal rights happening… Read more »
If you don’t like what people are posting on social media, then don’t follow them, or you can just use the block + ignore button Free speech means people can say what they want, freewill means you don’t have to listen People who try to silence debate or those they disagree with, are really just confessing their intellectual bankruptcy People who try to take away someone else’s voice, are just demonstrating to everyone else, that they’re scared of what that person might say You won’t change the world by silencing people and pushing them to the fringes, you change the… Read more »
Once a youtube channel I like, “Jubiilee” that brings people together to discuss society issues, decided to confront haters. They presented constructive commenters as haters. 100% of people who responded to that video said they were constructive comments. They were comments like “I am disappointed by Jubilee, you did not present this side of the story….”
I was very very surprised by it.
Even on this forum, I used the moniker “Super League Fan” with normal content and was censored each time. If it had been “Anti Super League”, it would have gone through.
I did say what I wanted to say under this name though. Showing my unwanted stance upfront was too much, I guess.
The problem with this is that there are many out there who will happily spread lies and outright deny reality and present it as their “opinion”. See what happened in the US after the election. These people are unaffected by “reason + logic”, because they are often bad faith actors. You see little actual dialog on social media, people tend to break off into echo chambers where their opinions never have to be challenged. It’s very easy to spew lies designed to further your racist philosophy and cushion them as “alternative facts” or “un-PC opinion”. Laughing at ourselves is great… Read more »
Couldn’t agree more! What kind of policing are the clubs etc advocating..where you can only say nice things?
Convenient timing after some piss poor performances and the super league shenanigans…
What where they supposed to do other than joining in with an “FA, Premier League, EFL, Women’s Super League and various other football bodies” initiative to raise awareness of online abuse?
I mean we are experts at shooting our own kneecaps off, but even the Kroenkes could miss this open goal.
Arsenal trying to make out like they’ve got a social conscience
Ahh, mb it’s an English football-wide thing
Pretty handy for them as it’s the day after the semi final…….
Ha. They won’t be able to respond after being hammered 4-0
Like we were hammered by Benfica, Olympiacos and Slavia Praha I suppose. I think you may be in for another disappointment, call yourself a fan?
Dunno how I will cope without the Arsenal’s linkedin account
Odd, I’m not used to KSE doing anything remotely right. It’s a strange feeling to me
Who thumbed down this? Stan kroenke?
Arsenal joins PornHub and posts how gets rapped every other week.
No clean sheets since we released our Seaman.
Ignorance is Strength
This is where it starts.
Zzzzz from all non users of social media
Forget social media. Try watching an Arsenal game and listen to (most) English commentators’ disparaging remarks about Arsenal players and the club as a whole, and one is left to wonder whether they’re actually taking the mick or talking about a club from outer space playing against an English club. The outright bias and contempt for Arsenal seems like a well orchestrated campaign to make the younger fans pick up the hate, and the way I see it as an overseas fan, it’s working down here. Granted they’re not covering themselves in glory with the results and the football they… Read more »
And the negativity just keeps on piling up, yet it’s all the manager and players fault. We didn’t play badly against Everton, considering our two senior strikers were unavailable, our fans were going apeshit outside, the police helicopter was hovering all the time, the VAR cheated us and our goalkeeper played like a five year old, but to hear the commentary, the punditry, and the fans reaction, you’d think everyone was bloody useless and threw the game because they didn’t care. The Emirates “faithful” have been a toxic crock of shit for years and it’s all just ramped up again,… Read more »
It’s a results business though. The negativity piles up because our results have been shit and are getting shitter.
That’s when the fans are supposed to help them, 12th man and all that, many of our fans are so full of hate they don’t know how to support any more. There are enough things going against our team at the moment without our fans piling in. Arsenal fans when we appointed Arteta “he’ll need at least three transfer windows before we can judge” after the FA Cup ” He’s won a cup but so what, eighth is shit” now “he’s fucking useless, the team are all lazy cunts, it was only a mickey mouse cup, Arteta out take the… Read more »
Maybe they’ll finally discover they won’t be missed.
The kneeling for a cause with verifiably terrible motives didn’t work, why would this?
Is ironic that we are now link with Spotify to buy over arsenal.
I blackouted Arsenal myself since last Monday on all social media accounts
Same, I only really check arseblog but all official channels I blocked. As long as KSE is still here I fon’t eant to give em even a view on a favebook post. Probably makes no difference but still
if everybody would act the same… The FB page currently has 37.7 million likes. If we as fans would decrease that to a number under 30 million or something and boycott merch etc. it would make a difference. Time will tell