A wave of online racism aimed at some of England’s Black football players has highlighted how social media companies’ content moderation systems are failing to monitor the use of emojis. In the aftermath, a wave of racist abuse was levelled at three Black England players – Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka – and messages on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram included monkey and banana emojis. Social media companies such as Facebook Inc, Twitter and Google, which owns YouTube, have spent years developing algorithms to detect offensive speech so that it can be removed. “Using emojis, like monkey or banana emojis, to racially abuse someone is completely against our rules,” said a Facebook company spokesperson. Players and officials also spoke out, including Rashford in a widely shared statement on social media.

Source: The Star July 16, 2021 03:46 UTC