Manchester United: Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Maguire obtained most abuse on Twitter final season

Seven in 10 Premier League footballers are topic to abuse on Twitter, with Cristiano Ronaldo receiving probably the most hate, a report has discovered.

Manchester United gamers make up eight of the ten most focused stars, with Ronaldo, Harry Maguire and Marcus Rashford receiving greater than 20,000 abusive tweets between them.

The examine by Ofcom and The Alan Turing Institute discovered tons of of abusive tweets are despatched to footballers across the clock.

This equates to just about 60,000 abusive messages directed in direction of Premier League gamers within the first half of final season alone — a mean of 362 day by day, or one each 4 minutes.

Shockingly, one in 12 of those assaults (8.6 per cent) focused a participant’s race or one other protected attribute.

The report comes forward of the On-line Security Invoice, which is anticipated to return to the Commons earlier than the autumn.

The report additionally discovered that eight Pink Devils gamers featured within the high 10 most abused stars

The invoice is prone to introduce guidelines for websites and apps similar to social media, engines like google and messaging platforms — in addition to different companies that individuals use to share content material on-line. 

Kevin Bakhurst, Ofcom’s group director for Broadcasting and On-line Content material, mentioned: ‘These findings make clear a darkish aspect to the gorgeous sport. On-line abuse has no place in sport, nor in wider society, and tackling it requires a group effort.

‘Social media companies needn’t wait for brand spanking new legal guidelines to make their websites and apps safer for customers. After we change into the regulator for on-line security, tech corporations should be actually open in regards to the steps they’re taking to guard customers. We are going to count on them to design their companies with security in thoughts.

‘Supporters can even play a optimistic function in defending the sport they love. Our analysis reveals the overwhelming majority of on-line followers behave responsibly, and because the new season kicks off we’re asking them to report unacceptable, abusive posts every time they see them.’ 

The report mentioned that whereas nearly all of soccer followers use social media responsibly, as much as 3.5 per cent of tweets included within the examine have been abusive. 

United’s Marcus Rashford (left) and Bruno Fernandes (proper), team-mates to Maguire and Ronaldo, have been the third and fourth-most abused gamers on Twitter within the 2021-22 season

England stars Harry Kane and Jack Grealish have been the one non-United footballers within the high 10

Whereas family names like Ronaldo and Harry Kane bore a lot of the brunt, 68 per cent of gamers nonetheless obtained not less than one abusive tweet, and one in 14 (seven per cent) obtained abuse day by day.

Dr Bertie Vidgen, lead writer of the report and head of on-line security at The Alan Turing Institute, added: ‘These stark findings uncover the extent to which footballers are subjected to vile abuse throughout social media.

‘Outstanding gamers obtain messages from 1000’s of accounts day by day on some platforms, and it would not have been potential to seek out all of the abuse with out modern AI strategies.

‘Whereas tackling on-line abuse is tough, we can not depart it unchallenged. Extra should be accomplished to cease the worst types of content material to make sure that gamers can do their job with out being subjected to abuse.’