Featured Image Credit: Doug Peters / Alamy Simon Serdar / Alamy
Topics: Gary Lineker, Football, Twitter, Elon Musk
Emily Brown
Topics: Gary Lineker, Football, Twitter, Elon Musk
Gary Lineker called out Twitter CEO Elon Musk over an abusive message sent to his son after his bust-up with the BBC.
The Match of the Day host caused controversy at the BBC last week when he criticised the government's migration policy on Twitter, describing a video in which home secretary Suella Braverman revealed plans to stop migrants crossing the Channel as 'beyond awful'.
Despite the fact he was voicing his own opinion, Lineker briefly took a step back from hosting BBC's Match of the Day, prompting Ian Wright, Alan Shearer, and Alex Scott to also take a break from the show in solidarity.
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Though the BBC obviously wasn't happy with Lineker's behaviour, people across the country showed their support for the presenter by posting tweets praising his actions and signing a petition to have him reinstated on MOTD.
The praise had even reached Lineker's son, George, who tweeted that he'd 'never had so many nice messages' as he had since the controversy began.
The pleasantries were unfortunately short-lived, though, as he soon shared a screenshot of a DM from a Twitter user who described him as a 'mug' and said: "How dare you stick up for what your sh**house of a dad said."
"You need to be burned at the stake," they added.
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After George shared the screenshot on Twitter, Lineker confronted Twitter CEO Musk while simultaneously roasting the person who'd sent the message, writing: "Is this acceptable @Twitter @elonmusk? And I don’t mean the grammar."
Last month, Twitter updated its policy to state that users 'may not wish, hope, or express desire for harm' on the platform.
"This includes (but is not limited to) hoping for others to die, suffer illnesses, tragic incidents or experience other physically harmful consequences," the policy states.
Twitter has also assured that users who violate the policy 'in most cases' will be immediately and permanently suspended.
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It's unclear whether this is what happened to the person who sent the message to George, but at the time of writing (14 March), their Twitter account no longer exists.
Lineker has since been reinstated at the BBC as the broadcaster's director general Tim Davie apologised for the disruption to regularly scheduled sports programs over the weekend.
He announced plans for an independent review of the corporation’s internal social media guidelines, while Lineker said he was 'glad that [they] have found a way forward' from the issue.
“I support this review and look forward to getting back on air." he said.