In a time where personal abuse on social media is being thankfully highlighted, a reminder for ALL to be wise

After my Twitter account was hacked last week, it's time to be wise, and to call out social media companies

It’s been great to see the Premier League taking the lead in the fight against social media abuse, racism, and any form of disgusting trolling this week.

They called out Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites and rightfully asked them to do more to protect it’s users, which is refreshing to see.

High profile players have been highlighting racist abuse and personal attacks, with many of them even being forced to turn off commenting on their posts.

Now I’m a realist, I understand the frustrations and emotions that goes along with supporting your beloved football team. You are always entitled to express your feelings as fans. But there is a stark and dangerous difference between criticising a player for their performance, and sending them personal abuse about them, their family, or their race.

As they say, this has to stop. Online trolling has to stop, and the onus is absolutely on the social media companies.

It’s all well suspending an account, but that same person can easily setup 100 more accounts and carry on abusing. Until they target and ban individual IP addresses, this goes on and on. The Police have their part to play and do take action, we saw that last week with a Chelsea fan. But the social media companies need to put the work in initially, and they simply have been failing to do so.

This is all connected to what I had happen to me last week. As most of you will hopefully be aware of by now, my Twitter was hacked and I am currently in the midst of trying to get it back.

I was stupid, I let my guard down, and please let this be a stark reminder to all of you, always go with your gut instinct and never believe something unless you are 100% sure of it’s legitimacy.

I’ve ALWAYS been super wise with scams like this, always pride myself of trusting my instincts, but I was completely done by a scam and now I’m left fighting to get back my Twitter account that I have literally dedicated my life to building up over the last 10 years with over 140,000 followers on.

The onus is on me, please be aware across the board and don’t let this happen to you. Question everything, doubt everything, and be more than wise.

This now brings me back to my initial subjects - Social media companies not protecting, or even caring about their users unless you are a celebrity. When I get my account back, I WILL be calling this out to a larger audience.

If I was a celebrity, I’d have my account back already. Because they are more important than me, and Twitter would act instantly for them. It really is that simple, and that brutal. Why are celebrities more important than an average person? Surely that is discrimination, no?

However, I have had to spend the last three days trying all different avenues and routes to even speak to a real person at Twitter who is not an automated response. It has proven to be near impossible. I have ended up being thankful to people with contacts, and all my hopes are resting on that now. I’m confident I’ll get it back.

The person who hacked me changed my @ name from @SiPhillipsSport to @Cegspor, but the account has all stayed the same other than that. I have been massively grateful to my followers who all instantly jumped on this and reported the account, and it may have now been frozen.

But my point here is WHY are you even able to change @ names? SURELY all that does is open up opportunities for manipulation. Twitter, I ask you, WHY is this allowed? WHY are you not doing more to protect your users, and WHY is it impossible for anyone with an issue to speak to you?

They won’t see this I know, and they don’t even care. They have a highly successful social media business and that’s all that matters.

I’ll end this on a positive. I had my second Twitter account for this site and for the Podcast open for a few weeks now and already managed to get many of my followers across to there - @SPTalksCFC.

This has allowed me to spread the word of my account being hacked, and also allowed me to speak to all the great Chelsea people I have on social media, and has reminded me about just how amazing this community can be and how supportive the Chelsea family can be.

There are MANY good people out there, and times like this remind you of exactly who those people are.

So please if you haven’t yet, follow my new Twitter account, but don’t unfollow/block the old one just yet, I am confident I will get it back.

Cheers all, Simon.