Premier League and EFL clubs unite to sign open letter on online abuse

Premier League and EFL clubs unite to sign an open letter on online abuse aimed at anyone who works within the football scene.

Teams, owners, staff and organisations, has signed and sent an open letter to Rishi Sunak, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, asking for action to be taken against online abuse, and to ensure the Online Safety Bill moves faster, to best protect those who work in, play or watch football.

In the 2021/22 season, Kick It Out saw a 40% increase in complaints of discrimination at grassroots football.

In the first three months of the 2022/23 season, we have already seen another 50% increase with verbal abuse escalating into physical assaults.

This abuse mirrors language that has become normalised online. So, if it’s accept it in social feeds, there is a must to expect it in local parks and playgrounds.

From your timeline to the terraces, we’re here to Kick It Out. https://t.co/uoZzlylLo4 pic.twitter.com/0oH3Oe2yc3

— Kick It Out (@kickitout) November 12, 2022

THE OPEN LETTER

Dear Prime Minister, Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg,

Tackling Online Abuse and the FIFA World Cup

In the coming weeks, the FIFA World Cup in Qatar will be the focus of global attention. The last World Cup was watched by more than 3.5 billion people. Football has evolved beyond the 90 minutes of live action to a 24/7 socially connected experience fuelled by social media with the last World Cup generating over 200 billion social media impressions.

Around 130 players at the last World Cup played their professional club football in the English Premier League or the EFL, the largest contribution of any country. The tournament itself is a global spectacle but is one to which English football makes a huge contribution. This year, we can expect similar levels of global attention and presence of English football.

We all hope that the social engagement around the tournament will be positive and that the people who play, watch and work in the game will be protected from racism, homophobia, misogyny, and other discriminatory abuse. However, to expect that would be the triumph of hope over bitter experience. We all know that abuse will happen. It is just a question of when, who is targeted, the scale and viciousness of the abuse and the scale of the harm it will cause. Recent research from FIFA and FIFPRO suggest that 1% of all football related posts are discriminatory, typically concentrated on a very small number of target victims. Assuming the same level of social media engagement as at the last World Cup, in the coming weeks discriminatory abuse could be viewed over 2 billion times. That equates to about 800 people witnessing abuse every second of every day during the tournament.

Online is not a parallel universe. Our culture is set by the worst behaviour we accept. That worst behaviour may start online but it does not end online. At Kick It Out, in the 2021-22 football season we saw a 40% increase in complaints of discrimination at grassroots football. In the first 3 months of the 2022-23 season, we have already seen another 50% increase with verbal abuse escalating into physical assaults. This abuse mirrors language that has become normalised online. So, if we accept it in our social feeds, we must expect it in our local parks and playgrounds.

A culture of impunity has developed on social media with a lack of meaningful consequences. You have the ability to change this. We are calling on you to do so. We will be asking people who play, watch or work in football to join our call for you to take action.

What do we want you to do? Prime Minister, the Online Safety Bill has been under discussion for the best part of 5 years. We welcome its ambition to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online. However, the frustrating delays mean it will likely now be overtaken by the Digital Services Act in the EU so it will not achieve the ambition to be a global leader. We risk being left behind, with players and others in Spain, Italy, France or Germany better protected and safer. We ask the government to move faster.

Together with our partners across sport, law and technology, we recently conducted research on historic abusive online content, mapping this content to the proposed framework under the Bill to consider how it would be treated under the new laws. We identified an initial list of 50+ posts that would not be illegal under the Bill but would fall into the category of content harmful to adults (so called legal but harmful” content). We are sharing some of those example posts with you with this letter. Some of these examples are aggressively abusive including suggestions that black footballers should not be in the England team and a torrent of homophobic abuse aimed at England players.

We recognise that there have been legitimate concerns expressed around balancing freedom of speech with privacy. Both are important rights. Neither is more important than the other and neither is absolute. We also understand that there has been particular anxiety around the sections of the Bill on legal but harmful” content and provisions on this may be dropped from the Bill itself.

In legislating against online abuse we must meet the world where it is, not where it used to be. Social media is no longer simply the digital equivalent of the town square. The functionality has developed. It mirrors how we congregate in the real world. It is a combination of public spaces (like the town square), private spaces (like your living room) and semi-public spaces (like a restaurant).

To find that balance, and for the protection of people who play, watch and work in football who are so often the victims of this casual culture of normalised abuse, we ask you to confirm that the following provisions in the Bill will remain in substantively their current form:

1. Provisions around illegal content bringing the online world into line with the real world (so that if it is illegal to say in the real world, it should be illegal online). This includes the proposed new offences around rape and death threats (which particularly affect women in the game)

2. Social media platforms required to conduct risk assessments supervised by Ofcorn Ofcom is used to assessing risk of harmful content from its experiences overseeing broadcast and other media so reflects its existing role and expertise

3. Social media platforms must ensure that access to harmful content is age restricted and appropriate many of those 200 billion impressions during the World Cup will involve children and young people.

4. User empowerment safeguards users must have more control over what they wish to see to enable them to make informed choices. Just because you have freedom of speech does not mean you have the right to force me to hear it That right does not exist in the real world. Why should it exist online?

5. Ofcom to oversee social media compliance with their own terms and conditions In our experience, social media companies already prohibit online abuse, but the application of those rules is inconsistent and opaque. They should be transparent, consistent and accountable to Ofcom.

It is essential that Ofcom and law enforcement are adequately resourced and able to partner with civil society, safety tech and other private entities. Enforcement of current laws is regionally fragmented and inconsistent causing victims of abuse (such as high-profile footballers) to have very low trust in law enforcement. In our letter to the Home Secretary in July 2020, we set out suggestions for a specialist multi-disciplinary national enforcement unit. This would be a much more efficient use of public resources and could restore lost public confidence. We urge the government to reconsider this approach and would welcome a discussion.

To Mr Musk and Mr Zuckerberg, the Online Safety Bill and the Digital Services Act are coming. You do not have to wait for them to come into force, you can begin to take meaningful action now. Upon acquiring Twitter, Mr Musk acknowledged that “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequence& In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all, where you can choose your desired experience according to your preferences”. When can we expect the technology to be available on your platforms that enables us each to have the online experience that we wish to have? For many of us, this means an experience free from exposure to racist, homophobic, misogynistic, or other discriminatory abuse.

Many of us across sport are asking for a safer, more enjoyable online experience that is free from unwelcome abuse. We do not think that this is too much to ask.

Yours sincerely

Sanjay Bhandari, Chair, Kick It Out

This letter is endorsed and supported by the following individuals and organisations:
• The EFL
• Dr Malcolm Clarke, Chair, Football Supporters’ Association
• Richard Bevan, CEO, League Manager’s Association
• Yvonne Harrison, CEO, Women In Football
• Steve Parish, Chairman, Crystal Palace FC
• Jon Varney, CEO and Thomas Frank, Head Coach, Brentford FC
• Tony Bloom, Chairman and Paul Barber, Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive, Brighton and Hove Albion FC
• Scott Duxbury, Chairman and CEO, Watford FC
• West Ham FC
• Zoe Brough, HR Director, Wolverhampton Wanderers FC
• Leon Mann, MBE

Football at all levels is experiencing a rise in instances of discrimination, with Kick It Out’s chair Tony Burnett telling the digital, culture, media and sport select committee.

When asked by Damian Green whether the perception that football is going back to the 1970s and 1980s is based on anecdote or hard data, Burnett replied: “There’s definitely evidence in the space that we work in and that’s around discrimination. If you look at the UK Football Policing Unit, they released a report two weeks ago talking about a 99% increase in hate crime discrimination over the last season.

“If you look at the stats that we have around discrimination – and bear in mind that we’re only one source of reporting because 92 clubs have their own sources, which all need to come together – we see a significant increase in the year to date when it comes to incidents of discrimination.

“And that increase is across the board: it’s racism, it’s LGBTQ+ discrimination, it’s misogyny. We are seeing an increase. And it’s not just the professional game, if you look at grassroots football we’re seeing a significant double-digit increase in reports of discrimination there. I think it’s reflective of a broader dynamic in society, being absolutely honest.”

A culture of impunity has developed on social media

The government, and the social media companies, have the power to create meaningful consequences

𝙒𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙡𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢 𝙩𝙤 𝙙𝙤 𝙨𝙤#BeeTogether 🐝

— Brentford FC (@BrentfordFC) November 15, 2022

Burnett claims the disjointed system for collating and investigating discrimination needs to be overhauled as a matter of urgency. “We have to have transparency of discrimination-reporting data so we can see the full picture across the 92 football clubs,” he said. “That way we can see the trends but, more importantly, we can understand why the trends are occurring.”

The FSA’s chief executive, Kevin Miles, called for a “sense of proportion” when discussing the rise in arrests for 2021-22, explaining that young fans needed to undergo an “element of socialisation” after the interruption caused by Covid.

“There are issues arising in terms of antisocial behaviour which are perhaps on the up, but we are talking about an increase in arrest figures when compared to an all-time low,” Miles said. “But some of the younger generation need to learn how you behave at football because perhaps that has been missed out on after the hiatus for Covid.”

A poor quality of stewarding was raised as a concern with low pay, lack of training and high turnover of staff pinpointed as areas that must be addressed to improve the matchday experience.

The University of Durham associate professor Dr Stacey Pope told the committee that “men’s football is not a safe, welcoming and inclusive space for women”, highlighting the lack of confidence in police and stewards to deal with incidents of misogyny, sexual harassment and sexual assault.

“Football is an operating in a vacuum here,” Pope said. “We know that public attitudes towards sexism and misogyny are changing so football needs to start changing too.”