THIS weekend SunSport will join Premier League clubs in their social media blackout campaign.
From 3pm on Friday, April 30 to 11.59pm on Monday, May 3, all of SE’s Twitter accounts will suspend activity.
Why is there a Premier League social media blackout?
Across the sporting world, accounts on social media will fall silent this weekend.
The initiative is a show of solidarity against racism, with all 20 Premier League clubs involved.
Billed as ‘weekend of action’, Twitter accounts which would usually be buzzing with activity across a bank-holiday period will instead be dormant.
The move is a bid to ramp up pressure on social platforms to act against online hate and abuse after a spate of recent incidents.
Thierry Henry last month told SunSport’s Troy Deeney why he quit social media.
The Arsenal legend shut down his accounts to take a stand against online abuse.
Twitter have responded to the campaign indirectly, posting a statement which condemned racist behaviour on their site.
It read: “Racist behaviour, abuse and harassment have absolutely no place on our service and alongside our partners in football, we condemn racism in all its forms.
“We are resolute in our commitment to ensure the football conversation on our service is safe for fans, players and everyone involved in the game.
“Since the started on September 12th, there have been over 30m Tweets from people in the UK about football.
“In that time we have removed over 7,000 Tweets in the UK that were targeting the football conversation with violations of the Twitter Rules.
“This represents roughly 0.02% of the overall football conversation in the UK and does not reflect the vast majority of people who engage in vibrant discussions about football on Twitter.
“Racism is a deep societal and complex issue and everyone has a role to play.
“We are committed to dong our part and continue to work closely with valued partners in football, government and police, along with the working group convened by Kick It Out to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively – both online and away from social media.”
Who else is taking part?
Alongside SunSport, a number of other broadcasters including Sky Sports, BT Sport and Guardian Sport will all fall silent on Twitter from 3pm on Friday.
Uefa will follow suit, as well as accounts for the FA, Premier League clubs, EFL, Women’s Super League, PFA, Kick It Out and the Football Supporters Association.
English cricket and Premiership rugby have also announced they intend to support the boycott.
F1 champion Lewis Hamilton has called on companies to do more in eradicating online hate and will also join the three-day ban.
He said: ” I think I’m going to be supporting [the boycott] this weekend also. There’s no reason not to.
“You’ve seen what’s happening around the world, you’ve seen a lot of the talk that happened last year, but this year is a year of action.
“The social media platforms haven’t done enough at the end. They have the capability of implementing change and making sure that there’s no grounds for that.”
