Wales international Rabbi Matondo has become the latest footballer to be subjected to racist abuse online, hours after the lifting of a social media boycott.
The 20-year-old, who is on loan at Stoke from German side Schalke, revealed he had been sent vile racist comments on Instagram.
Matondo wrote on Twitter: “Good to see the boycott changed nothing @instagram”.
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Alongside the text were two examples of abuse he had received since the end of the weekend-long boycott by players, clubs and governing bodies across a range of sports on Monday night.
A spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, said: “The abuse sent to Rabbi Matondo is unacceptable. We do not want it on Instagram and we quickly removed the accounts that sent it.
“We recently announced that we’ll take tougher action against people breaking our rules in DMs and later this week, we’re rolling out new tools to help prevent people seeing abusive messages from strangers. No single thing will fix this challenge overnight but we’re committed to doing what we can to keep our community safe from abuse.”
The boycott ran from 3pm on Friday until 12am on Monday. It’s aim was to show solidarity with people who have been abused on social media platforms and to try and bring about change.
Many think more needs to be done by platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter to prevent it from happening.
Arsenal legend Thierry Henry became a strong voice in the fight against racism when he deactivated his accounts in late March.
He said the problem had become ‘too toxic to ignore’ and that was it ‘far too easy’ for people to abuse others.
Liverpool skipper Jordan Henderson handed his social media accounts over to the Cybersmile Foundation, which aims to tackle cyber-bullying.
Speaking about the issue, he said: “I’m sick of seeing people I know, and people I don’t know, having to put up with the kind of abuse that turns my stomach.
“It has to stop and anyone who has a shred of decency has to play their part in making it stop.
“I didn’t [hand over the accounts to Cybersmile] lightly – I thought about it a lot and at one stage I was considering switching off all of my social media accounts in protest.
“I still have that option and I applaud those, like Thierry Henry, who have taken the ultimate step as far as this issue is concerned.”
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