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The legendary Thierry Henry has announced he’s disabling his social media accounts as a protest against the instance of increasing cases of online racism and bullying alleging such platforms have not done enough to tackle the menace. Henry, a former Barcelona and Arsenal star, boasts of a significant following across the three major social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
The 43-year-old French said that ‘sheer volume of ‘racism, bullying’ isn’t being regulated with the “same vigour and ferocity” when one infringes copyright. He said until the social media giants change their current outlook, he will keep his accounts disabled.
“From tomorrow [Saturday] morning I will be removing myself from social media until the people in power are able to regulate their platforms with the same vigour and ferocity that they currently do when you infringe copyright,” Henry posted via his Facebook page on Friday.
Hi Guys
From tomorrow morning I will be removing myself from social media until the people in power are able to regulate their platforms with the same vigour and ferocity that they currently do when you infringe copyright…. pic.twitter.com/gXSObqo4xg
— Thierry Henry (@ThierryHenry) March 26, 2021
“The sheer volume of racism, bullying and resulting mental torture to individuals is too toxic to ignore. There has to be some accountability. It is far too easy to create an account, use it to bully and harass without consequence and still remain anonymous. Until this changes, I will be disabling my accounts across all social platforms. I’m hoping this happens soon,” he concluded.
Henry’s decision comes after recent high-profile cases of footballers being subjected to racism and online threats. The likes of Marcus Rashford, Fred, Jude Bellingham, Antonio Rudiger, Axel Tuanzebe among others have receiving racist messages on their social media handles.
As a result, Instagram recently announced ‘tougher actions’ against such acts. “Currently, when someone sends DMs that break our rules, we prohibit that person from sending any more messages for a set period of time. Now, if someone continues to send violating messages, we’ll disable their account,” Instagram had said in a statement.
“We’ll also disable new accounts created to get around our messaging restrictions, and will continue to disable accounts we find that are created purely to send abusive messages,” it added.
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