Livingston captain Marvin Bartley supports the boycott of social media this weekend, and revealed he has been racially abused in the past week on Instagram.
The former Hibs’ midfielder believes that social media companies are condoning online abuse by “sitting on their hands” instead of implementing tighter controls and insists that people need to be held to account for what they post.
Bartley told BBC Scotland: “We’re almost at desperation point now. Everybody can see it needs to change. The only people that could change it overnight are the social media companies but they seem to be sitting on their hands.
“Obviously they’re not oblivious to what’s going on. They are sitting in their offices and saying it’s OK. They’re not doing anything about it.
“The government aren’t totally out of this either – they can do something. We saw when the Super League was coming about, they were having emergency meetings and going to bring in certain laws. Where are they now?”
“That lets you know where we’re at with it. It was quite powerful stuff the person had written. How Instagram can say that these things are OK, what chance have we got? They need to hold people accountable for what they’re writing.”
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
