FA chief makes blunt social media demand after Lionesses star Jess Carter racially abused

Daily Mirror

2 days ago

Jess Carter took the decision to withdraw from social media after receiving racial abuse online during England's Euro 2025 campaign and FA CEO Mark Bullingham has had his say
FA CEO Mark Bullingham recognises work needs to be done to tackle online abuse after Lionesses star Jess Carter suffered racial abuse during the women's Euros in Switzerland. Carter has stepped away from social media after the abuse, which has prompted the FA to get UK police involved.
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It comes a few short years after England men's stars Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were subject to racial abuse after the Euro 2020 final, which was held in summer 2021. 'We did think things would improve [since 2021] and we lobbied very hard together with Kick it Out and other representatives in football to make sure the Online Harms Act came through,' Bullingham said.
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'I think we would have liked it to have been stronger in some cases – if you look at the specific areas like 'legal but harmful' and things like that. There's a real risk that if we're not firm in how the act is implemented, it won't be as strong as we hope.
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'I think now it's incumbent on Ofcom to make sure they really do bring those responsible for running social media platforms to account and I haven't seen huge progress in the last couple of years. We would like to see it now."
He added that the FA had held meetings with social media platforms in recent years, but said 'we haven't seen the progress we'd like to have seen'. One issue comes from the fact that some of the abuse - around half, Bullingham estimates - comes from overseas and doesn't fall into the UK authorities' jurisdiction.
'If you look at the kind of areas of prevention, I think the prevention generally is done by the social media companies,' he added. 'If you look at the prosecution, obviously we can only work with the UK police, generally.
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'There are, when we work with some of the companies that support us, there are occasions where you can prosecute outside the UK, but it's really hard and generally really expensive. Obviously anything FIFA can do to bring pressure to bear, and they have, we've spoken with FIFA and UEFA on this, bring pressure to bear on social media companies, prevention is always better than a cure, right?
'So if we can work with them on that, that would be better, but where there are occasions, make sure we can prosecute. And we do think that people who perpetrate these hate crimes should be prosecuted wherever they are in the world.'
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Bullingham added that there were "multiple" instances of social media abuse when it came to those targeting Carter, reinforcing the message that prevention can be as important as the removal of offensive material. "I would say that all social media platforms could be a lot better," he said.
"There has been a lot of focus on taking down content and I think they could be better at taking down content but, more importantly, they could be much better at preventing it as well and then aiding prosecution when it happens. So they need to be better.
"I don't think that a particular platform is worse than some of the others. They like to take the view that they are just a portal, but actually they need to take responsibility as a publisher and make sure this vitriol and hate crime does not appear on their sites."