For many of us the interminable football and the interminable talking from pundits before and after the game over the last few weeks has driven many to seek out re-runs of Poirot or Game of Thrones on TV.
However – last night was one when the nation came together and cheered. We moved from ecstatic jubilation at the first speedy goal to despair at the penalty shoot outs . We will recover and there’s the World Cup to think about. Sir Southgate has shown the way.
What is unacceptable – the almost immediate trolling of those who missed the penalties on social media . Was Kane trolled for being the losing captain – I bet not as much as Rashford and Sancho and Saka .
The Metropolitan Police say that the abuse is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated and will be investigated.
The FA asks that the government to act quickly and bring in the appropriate legislation in this abuse so that it has real life consequences .
Of all the Social Media companies – Facebook and Twitter and Instagram sell more of the information that they collect from YOU than other companies They make millions ! Billions from YOU. It is up to them to start policing their patch .
An idea for a start – these young lads ( or any other celebrity) open to abuse for whatever reason need special treatment Surely these companies could organise a troll watch on their accounts and get rid of the rubbish before its read. There is software out there that can deal with this Google may be releasing a new tool called Perspective that uses machine learning to detect harassment and abuse , another one is Trolleq; there may be more . Obviously anything that can be used must be accurate and doesn’t violate the right and freedom of speech.
And if it can be done for them. It can be done for us.
OK – about this right and freedom of speech . My thoughts are that if you live in a society, it has to hold a personal responsibility. We can’t kill or steal in our society so we shouldn’t be able to use an unidentifiable internet account to bad mouth a identifiable person . All new inventions that have affected our lives had eventually had to be regulated . Cars; airplanes; electricity …..I could go on. To me it stands to reason there has to be regulation of this wonderful invention called the Internet.
Read
Zucked By Roger Mcnamee
The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick
Facebook. The inside story by Stephen Levy
An Ugly Truth Inside Facebooks Battle for Domination by Sheena Frankel and Cecilia Kang
