Today (Friday 30th of April) was the day that many football clubs across the EFL have had a Social Media blackout until Tuesday May 4th. This is in response to the online abuse (mainly discriminatory) which players and people associated to players have had to face on social media.
The boycott was first thought of by the ex Arsenal Legend Thierry Henry as he as well as many others believed that not enough was being done by social media platforms to deal with the abuse (for example people not being banned fast enough for stating abuse). He also stated that 'If you come as an individual, nobody cares. Companies only care when you come as a pack' and 'We saw when everyone came together last week what happened with the Super League. It lasted two days.' (referring to the plan that 12 of Europe's 'Super Clubs' were to make a competition of their own, which was then scrapped after large scale backlash from football fans across the world).
Recently there has been a large increase in the amount of abuse players face on social media with much of it being targeted racial abuse (with victims including Manchester United's Anthony Martial and Chelsea's Reece James).
The government has previously threatened social media companies with large fines which could account to nearly 10% of all its profits (which could amount to billions of pounds) if they fail to tackle abuse on their platforms.
Hopefully this boycott will send a statement to the social media companies and the public itself to stop online abuse and/or deal with it responsibly and quickly.
