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The former glamour model, who first campaigned to tackle online abuse when she launched a petition to criminalise internet bullying in 2017, told her Twitter followers that the “vile racist abuse” directed towards England players “proves” her “petition is more important than ever”. Price, 43, has called on the Government to introduce new rules that would ensure social media accounts are linked to verified forms of identification.
Proponents believe this will help “prevent anonymised harmful activity”, including abuse directed against Price’s teenage son Harvey.
Last month, Price took a 52-year-old man to court after he had shared a blackface video mocking Harvey, who suffers from Prader-Willi syndrome and autism, on his Twitter account.
The “track a troll” petition, launched in March 2021, has already received a response from the Government after it obtained ten thousand signatures.
The Government said: “User ID verification for social media could disproportionately impact vulnerable users and interfere with freedom of expression”.
“Anonymity”, the response continued”, “underpins people’s fundamental right to express themselves and access information online in a liberal democracy”.
However, following England’s heartbreaking penalty shoot-out defeat against Italy in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley, support for Price’s petition has increased to more than 650,000, the most of any open e-petition on the UK Government and Parliament website.
Marcus Rashford, 23, Jadon Sancho, 21, and Bukayo Saka, 19, all missed their spot kicks after England manager, Gareth Southgate, nominated them to take on the Italian goalkeeper, Gianluigi Donnarumma, in the penalty shoot-out on Sunday.
Research by Channel 4 News found that almost two thousand discriminatory and abusive comments were posted against the England trio and their teammate Raheem Sterling on Twitter, with an additional 167 posts considered to constitute “high risk” abuse.
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And Price has already been liaising with politicians about how Britain can tackle online abuse in the future.
Yesterday, she met with Conservative MPs Siobhan Baillie and Andrew Griffith to discuss ways to prevent online trolling.
“We all agree”, Price told her 1.8 million Twitter followers, “that anonymous abuse on social media has been left unchecked for far too long”.
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