Rio Ferdinand and Fara Williams join some of the biggest names in football to form EE Hope United - calling for tighter protections for women and young girls
(Picture: EE Hope United)England football legends Rio Ferdinand and Fara Williams have called on social media platforms to do more to hold individuals accountable.
They spoke as study shows almost every Lioness received online abuse leading up to their Uefa Women’s Euro 2022 win.
In an interview with the Evening Standard, the pair expressed the importance of consequences for perpetrators in tackling the issue.
Both speaking about how online abuse has grown since their playing days, Rio said: “When social media first came out, it wasn’t somewhere where you thought it was a playground for people to spout hate and ignorance and abuse.
“As players, we were affected by the terraces – but it’s come into different forms now.”
Fara added: “It is bullying because they’re allowed to say what they want to say with no consequences and if you hit back, what does that create?”
Rio spoke of how he’s previously lost thousands of pounds in fines for defending himself against trolls who face no action.
He said: “The people that are the perpetrators don’t have any accountability.”
HateLab – which monitors online hate crime and speech - revealed 23 out of 25 members of the Women’s Euro 2022 winning squad received online abuse from trolls.
Fara Williams was not surprised by the statistics, arguing that comparing the men and women’s game encourages abuse: “The less comparisons you do, the better in terms of the abuse from fans that are interested in the men’s game more than the women.”
Rio touched on his experiences with online abuse after a man received a suspended sentence for racially abusing the pundit after the Euro 2020 final on Twitter: “When people start throwing the numbers out saying these are the amount of people that have been affected, they don’t really take into account the wider network of that individual who are affected as well.”
The comments come after over sixty of the biggest names across UK sport and journalism have signed an open letter, penned by EE, calling on the new Government to better protect women and girls through the proposed Online Safety Bill.
The open letter follows campaigning from EE’s Hope United – a team of elite footballers from across the UK brought together to tackle online hate in all its forms.
It calls for additional provisions that would make violence against women and girls a priority harm alongside terrorism and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
Both Fara Williams and Rio Ferdinand are signatories of the open letter.
Fara noted that whilst they’re doing their part – more needs to be done on the issue.
“There’s only so much you can do – you can’t make change to the platforms, you’re just trying to get them to hear first-hand the effect it has.”
Rio added: “I don’t think this campaign can be limited to just football – it starts the conversation but it’s a societal issue, it’s bigger than just football.
“If football can be the catalyst for conversation, great – but then it goes far beyond that.”
The Online Safety Bill proposed by the government, which is currently in report stage, pledges to tackle forms of online abuse in a range of measures that requires social media platforms to be more stringent tackling it.
The government added an amendment to the bill for anonymous abuse, pledging to require ‘Category 1’ platforms to ensure adults are given the opportunity to verify themselves and providing adults with an option not to interact with unverified users.
The bill also states social media platforms will be required to do more to tackle racist abuse on their platforms, regardless of whether profiles are anonymous.
Read more about how EE is tackling online sexist hate via http://ee.co.uk/hopeunited.
