Is it illegal to make racist comments on Twitter or Instagram?
Get email updates with the day's biggest stories Invalid Email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice  In the past few days racist abuse direct at some of the England players after the Euro 2020 final has been widespread. Twitter and Facebook, which owns Instagram, said they acted quickly to take down the horrific abuse on the players' profiles. However, many users complained racist comments were still visible hours after they were posted. The Football Association (FA), has said in a statement it was "appalled by the online racism that has been aimed at some of our England players on Social media". Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson took to Twitter himself to say: "The England team deserve to be lauded as heroes, not racially abused on social media. "Those responsible for this appalling abuse should be ashamed of themselves." (Image: Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF)  The social media companies have now faced more tools to tackle and block abusive messages. Yes, posting racist comments is a hate crime, which can be punishable. So far, over the course of the past 10 years, there has been several examples of people being charged and given time due to racist comments online. In 2019, a 32-year-old man from Liverpool was sentenced for posting racist Tweets about Liverpool FC's Mohamed Salah. He pleaded guilty to racially/religiously aggravated international harassment, and was given a six week sentence, suspended for 12 months. (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)  The Metropolitan Police has said it is investigating the abuse, and that it "will not be tolerated". They tweeted: "We are aware of a number of offensive and racist social media comments being directed towards footballers following the Euro 2020 final. "This abuse is totally unacceptable, it will not be tolerated and it will be investigated." The problem is that it can be difficult to take action against those posting racist comments online, because profiles can be completely anonymous. This means it's hard to know who the person commenting actually is, because they can use a fake name or display photo. Facebook and Twitter say racist abuse is not allowed on their platforms. But the pressure is on the social media platforms to do more to stop hateful messages. The platforms are reluctant to ban specific words, phrases and emojis completely, because users can simply adapt their language to get around it. Twitter said that "through a combination of machine learning based automation and human review, we have swiftly removed over 1,000 Tweets and permanently suspended a number of accounts for violating our rules". The social media company also said it will "continue to take action when we identify any Tweets or accounts that violate our policies". It continued: "We have proactively engaged and continue to collaborate with our partners across the football community to identify ways to tackle this issue collectively and will continue to play our part in curbing this unacceptable behaviourboth online and offline." Facebook also said it "quickly removed comments and accounts" and will "continue to take action against those that break our rules". It added: "In addition to our work to remove this content, we encourage all players to turn on Hidden Words, a tool which means no one has to see abuse in their comments or DMs." How to report racist comments  The best thing to do is to report discriminatory posts on social media platforms, which will prompt moderations to decide whether they should be removed. On Facebook, you can do this by clicking on the three dots on the top right hand corner of any post and choose "Find support or report post". On Instagram, you can report a post for hate speech or racist language by tapping on the three dots above the post and choosing "Report". Get all the latest news sent to your inbox. Sign up for the free Mirror newsletter  (Image: Getty Images/Cultura RF)  The process is similar on Twitter, where you will be asked to provide more information about the issue. You can also report online hate material to the police through True Vision. The tool is owned by the National Police Chief's Council, and the police will assess if it meets the threshold for a criminal office.