Following Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Mexico, Welsh internationals Rabbi Matondo and Ben Cabango were racially abused on Instagram, according to Facebook.
Facebook, which owns Instagram, behaved just hours after Matondo blasted the social media site, accusing it of doing little to combat racial violence.
Both the Stoke City winger and the Swansea defender Cabango, both 20 years old, sent derogatory comments on Instagram.
Police in Wales also confirmed that they are “investigating the roots of politically based social media messages” directed at Cabango and Matondo.
According to a Facebook spokeswoman, in addition to deleting the pages, the firm is working on other steps to tackle online harassment.
“We don’t tolerate racial harassment on Instagram, so we deleted the accounts that sent these tweets to Ben Cabango and Rabbi Matondo this weekend,” a spokeswoman said.
“We’ve developed resources to ensure that public figures never have to tolerate DMs from people who don’t follow our laws, and we recently announced that we’ll take stricter action when we catch people violating our rules in DMs.”
We also understand that these challenges are broader than we are, so we are partnering with business, government, and others to jointly accelerate social progress through action and activism.
The Football Association of Wales (FAW) encouraged social media outlets to go beyond and beyond. “The FAW joins other national organisations and clubs in urging social media networks and governmental agencies to take stronger, more sustainable, and urgent action in response to this desperate conduct.”
Matondo had previously illustrated the paradox of certain accounts being active, despite the fact that copyright laws suggested he would have his account removed if he shared photos of the pleasant with Mexico. “And it goes on another week of Instagram saying nothing about racial abuse,” Matondo tweeted.
The pair are the most recent footballers to face racist violence on social media. Anthony Martial, Marcus Rashford, and Manchester United teammate Fred have all been subjected to such violence.
After being racially insulted following his team’s FA Cup quarter-final loss by Leicester, Fred said last week that “we cannot feed that mentality.”
Despite Premier League bosses’ objections, Twitter said in February that it would not end the tradition of encouraging users to post from anonymous accounts.
We agree that everybody has the freedom to express themselves without the need for a government ID.
