Social media abuse: Twitter says UK ‘by far’ main origin of comments after Euro 2020 final

The UK was “by far” the main origin of the “abhorrent racist abuse” on Twitter after England lost the Euro 2020 final, the social media platform has said.

Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were abused after missing in the penalty shootout loss to Italy.

Twitter removed 1,622 tweets in the next 24 hours but identify verification “would have been unlikely to prevent the abuse”, it said.

“Of the permanently suspended accounts, 99% of their owners were identifiable.”

Police arrested 11 people for sending racist social media messages after the final, with almost four times more of the criminal comments being posted by people overseas than in the UK.

However, Twitter said: “While many have quite rightly highlighted the global nature of the conversation, it is also important to acknowledge the UK was – by far – the largest country of origin for the abusive tweets we removed.

There have been numerous calls from within football for social media companies to take more action against discrimination on their platforms.

Earlier this year clubs, players, athletes and a number of sporting bodies took part in a four-day boycott of social media in an attempt to tackle abuse and discrimination.

And last week the Professional Footballers’ Association called on Twitter to stop taking the “easy” option to tackle abuse aimed at players online.

New research showed a 48% rise in racist abuse sent to players on the social media platform during the second half of last season, and that the majority of accounts that sent the abuse were still on Twitter as recently as last month.

After Rashford, Saka and Sancho were targeted, there was condemnation from, among others, the Duke of Cambridge, the Football Association and Prime Minister Boris Johnson.