Gareth Bale says he will join Thierry Henry’s social media boycott

Bale was speaking after two of his Wales teammates were racially abused on Instagram at the weekend

Wales captain Gareth Bale has vowed to follow Thierry Henry in boycotting all social media if more is not done to tackle abuse across its platforms.

The Arsenal and Barcelona legend announced last week that he would be leaving social media due to the failure to address racism and bullying.

Henry said that he hoped those responsible would “regulate their platforms with the same vigour and ferocity that they currently do when you infringe copyright”.

Speaking after his Welsh teammates Ben Cabango and Rabbi Matondo received racial abuse via Instagram after their country’s 1-0 win over over Mexico at the weekend, Bale pledged his support for Henry.

“Something needs to happen,” the Tottenham forward said.

“I think if everyone came together and decided to boycott social media, to make a statement [ then I would].

“If everybody did it at once, not just one or two people, and if we did a campaign with a lot of big influential people in sport and other forms of life came off social media to make a statement, then yeah, I think it could help.

“If that was the case, I would be all for that.”

South Wales police have since confirmed they are investigating the abusive posts aimed at Cabango and Matondo.

Facebook, who also run Instagram, later confirmed that the accounts from which the abusive messages were sent have been removed from the platform.

“We don’t want racist abuse on Instagram and have removed the accounts that sent these messages to Ben Cabango and Rabbi Matondo this weekend,” a company spokesperson is quoted as saying by the BBC. 

“We have built tools that mean public figures don’t ever have to receive DMs [direct messages] from people they don’t follow and we recently announced that we’ll take tougher action when we become aware of people breaking our rules in DMs.

“This work is ongoing and we are committed to doing more. We also know these problems are bigger than us, so are working with the industry, government and others to collectively drive societal change through action and education.”