Eni Aluko says X allows people to 'vomit hatred unchecked'
Good Afternoon all,
Today I want to highlight a story that may have slipped through the cracks and the Conservatives and Labour parties go back and forth on Antisemitism and Islamaphobia.
Former England striker and broadcaster Eni Aluko has criticised Elon Musk's X social network for allowing people to "vomit their hatred unchecked".
Aluko, who faced a wave of abuse after ex-footballer Joey Barton attacked her punditry, told the BBC that black women are being systematically targeted.
Joey Barton also did not respond to points raised by the BBC.
Barton had posted repeatedly about Aluko, triggering this abuse, after her coverage of an FA Cup match in January. The first of his posts said she and another female pundit, Lucy Ward, were the "the Fred and Rose West of football commentary", referring to the Gloucestershire serial-killer couple.
Aluko played for Chelsea and England, scoring 33 international goals in 102 games before retiring in 2020. She now has an established broadcasting career. But her success has been accompanied by a wave of hate on social media.
The day after Joey Barton began his attack on her, she said the online response made her afraid to leave her house.
"I started to get quite anxious because you get that feeling of being in a fishbowl. Everybody is sort of thinking, talking about you and reading the horrific stuff that's been said about you," Aluko said.
"I'm not going to leave my house. I'm going to disguise myself when I go and get milk from the supermarket. Why should I have to do that? But this is the real-life impact of online abuse and nobody's stopping it."
I chose to highlight this story because of her final statement which is that online abuse has real-world implications. It’s easy to think ‘it’s just social media’ but we should be more careful about what we write and we should demand more from social media platforms too on this topic.
M.T. Omoniyi
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