By Hans Ebert Visit Hans-Ebert.com
There should be a law against it. Seriously. A law against hiding behind pseudonyms and abusing people online. It’s high time to come down hard on those, and let’s here focus on horse racing, who take to Twitter and hide behind freedom of speech to tweet through their pockets with vile attacks. They should be named and shamed and banned by racing clubs.
Racing Ministers and Administrators? Listening? Horse racing is going backwards until Twitter is policed better. But do you people care enough to do anything about it? About Biff and the rest of the goons?
It’s not at all difficult these days to unmask these cowards. Yes, there are those who criticise jockeys and trainers with humour mixed with knowledge and looking for some answers. There are those jockeys with hardly great track records for being the most honest people around deserving of being taken to task for tweeting from both sides of their mouths. But to attack- and attack being the operative word- especially young riders ill-equipped to handle criticism and which could have a serious negative effect on their psyche shows dangerous cyber bullying. It’s wrong wrong wrong.
It’s bad for the image of horse racing. It’s bad for the mental anguish caused to those on the receiving end of this angry, punch drunk vitriol. And don’t EVER think this doesn’t have an effect on those who might see this hate in passing. It does. Where could this lead? Nowhere good.
No, haters shouldn’t be allowed to hate. They should be drummed out of horse racing. Legally. And we have no problem at all in Twitter being policed by the public who take these cowards on and shame them out of the social media platform.
Yes, one can block, mute and report hate speech. But it’s now time for Twitter to show everyone in which ways they are tackling and righting the wrongs of online abuse from Twitter trolls.
If horse racing is seen by everyone else how, as an industry, it has come together to tackle this issue by working WITH Twitter and forced change in online laws, it can only help enhance the image of the sport.
Video killed the radio star. And, especially in certain racing jurisdictions, Twitter is a dangerous place to be.
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