AC Milan of Italy defender, Fikayo Tomori is raising questions over the continued involvement of footballers in social media chats and interactions, following the recent wave of online slurs and racial attacks they keep facing, megasportsarena.com reports.
Tomori, who is on loan from Chelsea of England to Milan, questioned social media’s worth after seeing numerous footballers subjected to racial abuse online in recent weeks; with fellow Blues’ defender Antonio Rudiger as well as Manchester United’s Axel Tuanzebe and Anthony Martial all victims in the past weeks.
With those incidents fresh in mind, Tomori, who was born in Canada to Nigerian parents but naturalized in order to star for England at full senior level, added that, despite social media still having many positive qualities, the various platforms must do more to combat discrimination.
Although Instagram announced last week their plans to impose stricter penalties on users that send abusive messages, including removing their accounts, Tomori wants to see further stiff and telling action taken by social media companies to fight discrimination.
Tomori told Sky Sports News: “Social media is good when you’re winning but then it can turn to a bad side where it turns racist, where people get abused. It makes you wonder, is it worth having social media? Why is it happening?
“It’s a complicated situation. It’s a small percentage, a minority, but they’re still there, it’s prevalent not just in football and sport but life as well. I know people are emotional and passionate but to go to that level of frustration and anger, when it’s someone you know personally, it does hit home even more so.
“My experience of social has been quite positive and things can happen all the time because it’s social media and the whole world can see what’s happening especially when you’re in the public eye. We all know it’s not right.
“Obviously we see on the news and social media the talk about people being racially abused and it’s sad to see, especially when it’s people you know for example Axel Tuanzebe for Manchester United, I know him personally.
“It’s down to the Instagrams, the Twitters and Facebooks, all of these social media platforms to stamp it out. Not letting people make fake accounts within 10 minutes and spouting racist abuse to people, they should be able to stamp down and identify these people so they are punished.”
