Twitter has dropped almost all racist tweets aimed at football players in the run-up to the World Cup. The Guardian reports this on Sunday after investigating a hundred racist tweets addressed to the players. The social media platform did not respond to 99 of them.
The research was conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). It found that in the week before the World Cup, Twitter failed to respond to 99 of the 100 racist tweets reported.
Only one tweet was deleted. In it, a racist insult was repeated sixteen times. The other tweets remained visible online this weekend.
The tweets are directed at 43 footballers, including British players Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka. For example, very racist swear words were used in the messages. Monkey or banana emojis were also posted or called for people to “go back” to other countries.
All World Cup participants will be given the opportunity to filter their social media for discriminatory or offensive comments. World football association FIFA and players’ union FIFPRO have created the SMPS (Social Media Protection Service) for this purpose.
Troubled times for Twitter
Twitter is in turbulent times. Thousands of employees have been fired or even left Twitter since Elon Musk bought the platform on Oct. 27. According to Bloomberg , Musk is considering laying off even more employees.
Musk says Twitter is still being moderated. According to Musk, “negative tweets and hate tweets” become less visible, but not always deleted. Users can only find the tweets if they are actually looking for them.
