Majority of racist tweets aimed at footballers after the Euros came from the UK, Twitter says

The majority of racist tweets aimed at footballers following the Euros final came from accounts based in the UK, Twitter has said.

According to the social media platform, out of the 1622 tweets that were identified and removed by automated tools in the 24 hours after the match, the UK was “by far the largest country of origin for the abusive Tweets we removed”.

It comes after England lost to Italy in the final during a tense penalty shootout. After the game, England players Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancha received racist abuse online causing the Football Association, Boris Johnson and other high profile figures to condemn comments as utterly “disgusting” and “unacceptable”.

Twitter has not confirmed exactly how many of those 1622 tweets originated in the UK.

Last week, the police confirmed they had so far made 11 arrests during their investigation of online racial abuse of England players.

Data from the UK Football Policing Unit said that, of 207 social media posts deemed to be criminal, 34 came from accounts in Britain and 123 in other countries.

Twitter’s data refutes that by examining a wider pool of tweets. The platform added that having ID verification would not have prevented the abuse as 99 per cent of accounts were identifiable and that it was putting in place measures to improve their identification and removal of racist tweets online.

They said: “There is no place for racist abuse on Twitter. Our aim is always that Twitter be used as a vehicle for every person to communicate safely.

“We’re determined to do all we can, along with our partners, to stop these abhorrent views and behaviours being seen on and off the platform.”