Celtic have highlighted “racial and sectarian attacks and horrendous personal abuse” against their players, staff and fans as they backed a social media boycott.
Scottish football has made a collective decision to switch off all social media use from 3pm on Friday until midnight on Monday.
The move mirrors English football’s planned action in protest at abuse towards players with a number of other sports following suit.
A Celtic statement read: “As a club who has welcomed all since 1888, we are pleased to support this collective campaign.
“Sadly, through various social media platforms Celtic players, staff and supporters for some time have been subjected to racial and sectarian attacks and horrendous personal abuse – this is something which simply has to stop.
“Abusing someone because of the colour of their skin, abusing an individual due to their religion, unacceptable personal attacks or pathetically mocking the death of a loved one – our players, staff and supporters have, tragically, experienced it all through social media.
“We must all make a stand and together defeat this negative, damaging behaviour which inflicts so much harm.
“Social media can be an important, powerful tool. Let’s use it properly.”
Scottish football authorities announced their collective action on Wednesday evening.
A joint statement announced that the game had united to support a boycott of social media in response to “continuing racist and discriminatory abuse online aimed at players, staff, supporters and others associated with the game”.
Scottish Professional Football League chief executive Neil Doncaster said: “Discrimination of any kind has absolutely no place in Scottish football and the online abuse received by some of those involved in our national game is absolutely abhorrent.
“Social media provides a wonderful platform for clubs of all sizes to communicate with their fans. It’s a platform that our clubs have used to great effect in recent years but it is also a medium that is being abused by a vile and mindless minority.
“These cowards often hide behind anonymous accounts and it is incumbent upon social media companies to actively and aggressively combat this problem.
Scottish Football Association chief executive Ian Maxwell added: “At our recent summit meeting involving clubs and representatives of the game we witnessed a groundswell of people motivated to tackle inequality in all its forms.
“We are also in dialogue with social media companies to ensure adequate preventative measures are put in place to tackle the specific issue of online abuse via those channels.”
Vivienne MacLaren, Scottish Women’s Football chair, noted an increase in “abusive and discriminatory language targeted at those involved in our game”.
“This has been particularly prevalent on social media and we have made it very clear we will not tolerate this,” she added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel