THIERRY HENRY has announced that he is quitting social media until ‘vigorous’ action is taken.
A number of people have been subjected to vile racist abuse on various online platforms.
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And Henry, 43, has demanded ‘accountability’ be taken – comparing social media companies’ action taken against copyright infringements to the way it responds to abuse.
He wrote on his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram platforms: “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.
“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.”
Henry has over ten million Facebook followers, in addition to 2.3m on Twitter and 2.7m on Instagram.
In response, a Facebook spokesperson told Sky Sports: “We don’t want discriminatory abuse on Instagram and we remove it when we find it.
“Between October and December last year we took action on 6.6 million pieces of hate speech content on Instagram, 95 per cent of which we found before anyone reported it to us.
“We recently announced that we’ll take tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMs and we have built tools to help people protect themselves.
“We’ll continue this work, and know these problems are bigger than us, so are working with others to collectively drive societal change through action and education.
“We’re committed to our ongoing work with the industry, government and others including our work with Kick It Out.”
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