KNVB recently launched a political plan to tackle online racism and discrimination in Dutch football. The National Football League will have a conversation with Facebook about it next month.
All football clubs in England recently announced that they will shut down their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts this weekend. Clubs want these platforms to do more to tackle racism and discrimination online.
The clubs concluded that football players in England are increasingly facing this. They had already called on social media in February via an open letter to take action after a wave of racist incidents on social media.
German club 1899 Hoffenheim announced on Monday that it will follow the English model and boycott social media for several days.
KNVB has already launched an attack plan
In the past year, KNVB has already launched the “Our Football belongs to Everyone” attack plan, which contains twenty components to tackle racism and discrimination. The union has been working on this for quite some time. KNVB also has an eye for the online approach.
In cooperation with the government and professional football clubs, the federation wants to investigate the extent of online racism in Dutch football. Based on this, a common policy plan should be developed for this approach.
KNVB itself is already a little further in approach to the racist and discriminatory reactions entering its social media channels. The Union wants to address this more acutely and has offered possibilities for this to various social interest groups.
There is currently no question about a boycott of social media, as in the UK, in the Netherlands. A KNVB spokesperson said: “The boycott in the UK comes after a long history of incidents and discussions with social media companies that did not produce the desired result. The boycott is now used as a last step.”
