Read on Twitter
The best article I've read on this issue. The abuse athletes receive is heartbreaking. Unfortunately the solution football keeps putting forward is unworkable, unenforceable and unsafe. It's difficult to say that without sounding like you're excusing the abusers. But it's true. https://twitter.com/AdamCrafton_/status/1380778705262366721
It isn't just Jurgen Klopp and Harry Maguire suggesting that social media accounts are linked to verifiable personal ID. I see it all the time. "It's simple," people say. "They have the technology." It really isn't and they don't. But there is never a good time to point this out.
The pain when anyone is abused on social media is mostly unimaginable for me as a straight, white male but I have seen it first hand. It is natural to suggest solutions. If you have an ounce of human compassion you do not, right at that moment, point out the flaws in the idea.
But let's be clear on what that idea is, in reality: the biggest personal data collection exercise in human history. In the case of just one platform, somewhere around 3bn people, across every nation on earth, would upload their personal ID to one, single commercial business.
Which form of ID would we ask for which has commonality in every nation, for people of all ages? How will the platforms check if uploaded documents are authentic? How will the data be stored and used? Under which country's laws? Who is able to access it? Under what legislation?
I see well-meaning people suggesting ways their betting app works, or whatever. The size and scale of the social platforms has no useful comparison. Handling the amount of data they already have carries really significant challenges. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/08/facebook-2019-breach-users
I do not claim to have a better solution. The issue of abuse has moved from platform to platform over the years and is also a major problem offline, suggesting what we all know which is these are societal issues that play out on social platforms. It's far from simple to solve.
Twitter/Instagram, the two platforms where many of the issues with athletes have been, both have good tools which can make things better. They're not always used - maybe nobody has taken the athlete through them or the athlete doesn't see why it should fall to them. I get that.
What we know is that when we have platforms where anyone in the world can say anything they want to athletes, that is mostly great but sometimes very, very bad, and fixing that problem is far from simple, even if it's understandable that people want to suggest a solution.
