Arsenal and Elon Musk are about to become intertwined in a new controversy after the club's primary online goal to curb online abuse takes a damaging hit amid new Twitter strategy
Social media has been one of the worst places to exist as an Arsenal fan. The club has one of the most dedicated and passionate groups of supporters on the planet, and the support for the Gunners not just up and down the country at home and away matches but also globally during preseason or even midseason tours is almost unrivalled.
However, sadly, there have been thousands, if not millions, of incidents of abuse online revolving around the club, its staff and its players. Not only that but from one fan to another has also been regularly witnessed. Many strategies have been attempted to help combat this, including players coming out to speak openly of the abuse they’ve suffered.
One of these players was Aaron Ramsdale. He famously received a torrent of abuse prior to even becoming an Arsenal player from so-called supporters who would soon be cheering him on as he saved point after point for their club.
“At the very start, it was difficult,” he said. “I had a lot of negativity around the signing, with idiots online saying 'Don’t sign!'
“Not necessarily death threats but threats saying ‘We know where you live’ and things like that, trying to scare me.
“Quite quickly I turned all that stuff off. Social media for me is a place to communicate with my friends and with the fans as well, but with limits on who can actually reach me.
“So, I just turned comments off from people I don’t follow and turned notifications off on Twitter from people I don’t follow. They can still try to message me but I will never see it."
One of the methods might be to turn of notifications, which is an effective method. Another is to block people.
Ramsdale is an ambassador for Hope United, and I have done work myself to help raise awareness for what is a fantastic cause designed to help tackle sexism, homophobia and many other forms of abuse in the sport. One of the key messages of Hope United is instructions on how to block people online.
However, this is all about to change. No longer called Twitter since its recent name change to X under the tutelage of Elon Musk, the platform is set to work at getting rid of the block feature.
Musk said that the function of blocking, “Makes no sense” and that only direct messages will be able to be blocked. Well, while it might not make sense to Musk, this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense to others.
With the blocking feature removed, people will only be able to mute other users. This means that the potential abuser is able to still see all posts from their target and reply, but the owner will never see the responses.
It does mea,n though, that everyone else will be able to see abusive responses underneath posts instead. Accounts can then respond with potential print-screened images of the abusive posts meaning that the victims remain at risk of seeing them.
Arsenal’s aims to mitigate online abuse would certainly take a serious hit if indeed the block feature is removed. The club have teamed up with another platform known as Pixstory.
Chief Commercial Officer Juliet Slot said: “We’re committed to fighting the toxicity and abuse that has become all too common online.
"We’ve done a lot of work internally to protect our players from harmful abuse and we already work with external partners to help us take meaningful action against abusers. Now, we’re delighted to partner with Pixstory. When used in the right way, social media can be a wonderful place for supporter engagement and information sharing.”