Instagram has admitted it made mistakes in moderating racist abuse directed at England footballers following their Euros final loss.
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Following England’s loss to Italy on Sunday evening, the social media accounts of Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho, who missed their penalties, were flooded with abuse including monkey emojis and vile racist slurs.
Analysis from i on Wednesday – three days after the abuse began – showed that dozens of accounts still hadn’t been removed, with derogatory comments and racial slurs still live on footballers’ profiles and new offensive posts being regularly added.
Many Instagram users said they had reported the posts but were informed in a standard message from site that the comments did not violate rules.
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri said this was because posts had “mistakenly” been identified as benign by moderation technology – rather than being referred to humans to be checked.
“We have technology to try and prioritize reports, and we were mistakenly marking some of these as benign comments, which they are absolutely not,” he said in a tweet. “The issue has since been addressed, and the publication has all of this context.
One Instagram user told i earlier this week that she had reported 43 racist comments and just one had been removed. All were reviewed by Instagram by either community moderators or AI, and she was told the comments did not go against guidelines.
As of Wednesday, i found that at least 45 accounts which had posted abuse were still active. Of 15 accounts specifically brought to Instagram’s attention on Tuesday morning, just three had been removed.
At least two dozen racially-abusive comments remained on the footballers’ profiles including the N-word and calls for the stars to “go back” to Africa.
Police have launched an investigation into the abuse, while the Football Association (FA) is reportedly offering the players the option to take legal action against those behind it.
Instagram insisted that racist abuse had no place on its platform.
A spokesperson said: “We use technology to help us review and remove harmful content, but we know these systems aren’t perfect, and we’re constantly working to improve. Since Sunday’s final, we’ve been removing comments and disabling accounts that repeatedly break our rules, and we’ll continue to do so.”
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