Marcus Rashford has slammed Twitter’s promise to monitor the account of the top 50 black footballers as useless in the fight against racism on social media.
Instead he says the solution is “easy” – simply insist on users proving their identity before signing up to the site.
The England striker is just one of a number of victims in recent weeks in a problem that has continued despite the company’s promise to monitor abuse directed at the highest-profile targets.
Marcus Rashford’s Manchester United team-mate Paul Pogba has also been targeted, along with Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham.
But Rashford said: “That doesn’t change anything. The number of accounts that are out there is ridiculous.
“So, the way to sort of control it is that everyone in the world who uses these platforms can only have one account.
“It seems to me like things have been going backwards rather than forwards. We have to rely on the campaigns and stuff like that to deal with the situation because our voice only has so much power.
“For me, it is too easy to do what you like on the internet and any of us now can go on and create accounts and write what we want under anyone’s post and no one would ever know.
“That one would be an easy one to get rid of but there’s a lot of things that need to change.
“There could be a problem because right now, everybody obviously loves the sport and loves football.
“That’s all we wanted to do when we were kids and that’s still what we want to do now.
“For these issues to be coming up all the time, it feels a bit strange to me and I think the minute we can sort the situation out, the better it’ll be for everyone.
“Just to see it spike in the last couple of months, it’s been unbelievable, so we want to just nip it in the bud while it’s happening.”
