Watford captain Troy Deeney believes football’s social media boycott this weekend will put the platforms’ “feet close to the fire” and send a warning that “this is what we did for four days, imagine if we did it for a month”.
The English game as a collective – including the Premier League, Football Association, Women’s Super League, EFL, clubs, players – will join forces and shun Twitter, Facebook and Instagram from 3pm on Friday to midnight on Monday. They have been joined by Uefa, many of the game’s key sponsors and broadcasters.
The blackout is a response to the lack of action taken by the companies against rampant discriminatory abuse players have been receiving for years.
Deeney, who has been an integral figure in football’s fight against racism, tells i in an interview today: “The social media blackout is a great thing, because it gives us analytics to turn around at the end of it and say this is the impact which it had and you can present to social media and you can put their feet close to the fire and say: Look, this is what we did for four days, imagine if we did it for a month.
“Football clubs won’t lose that much money from their social media feed, there’s so much more money coming in elsewhere. All we want to do is promote change. How can you not post a Justin Bieber song to a video you’ve created because the algorithm says no, that’s copyrighted, we’ll get sued. But you can call someone a n****r and it’s not a problem.”
Deeney, 32, is aware of how challenging it has been for those working behind-the-scenes on the boycott plans to encourage widespread involvement for the four days across the game. i revealed earlier this week that some Premier League clubs had baulked at the length of time. But the striker believes there could be future boycotts for longer if the social media companies do not respond adequately.
“I think you have an appetite, for me, if people didn’t feel there was change,” he says.
“Having known people that are there and working on it, it’s been a monumental effort to get clubs all aligned to say yes. It’s difficult to get even get five people to agree where to eat on a night out let alone people to give up their social media revenue. Especially when you look at a team like Norwich, they’re due to potentially pick up the Championship this weekend, they’re now choosing it’s a bigger issue than to post about it.”
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3eN1QAV
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