FRENCH soccer legend Thierry Henry has accused social media companies of making “money through hate” and says they are still not doing enough to fight online abuse on their platforms.

The former Arsenal and Barcelona forward has been boycotting all social media platforms since the end of March following a spate of online racist abuse aimed at Black soccer players and what he said was the inability of social media companies to hold users accountable for their actions.

Speaking at the Web Summit in Lisbon on Tuesday, Henry announced he would be launching a campaign along with his sponsor Puma and the Game of Our Lives foundation to help fight online abuse and put pressure on social media companies to take tougher action.

“We need help,” Henry told the summit. “We’ve all been touched by it.”

In March, Henry, currently assistant coach of the Belgian national team, closed his social media accounts. “Me as an individual, I’m OK without it,” he said.

“We need help from people in higher positions,” he added, saying he wanted social media companies to be held responsible. “We need to come together to make sure that those people maybe legislate a law that will make those platforms more accountable.”

In April, soccer clubs, players, sporting bodies, mainly English, as well as Britain’s Prince William, staged a three-day boycott of social media aimed at tackling online abuse including racism.

Speaking to CNN back in May, Henry explained his initial decision to delete all of his social media accounts, which had a combined following of 11 million people, saying that, “When we come together, it’s ... powerful.”

“At the very beginning, you know, I was kind of in a weird mood, shall I say, we talked a lot throughout those moments and I was like: ‘People are not realizing what’s at stake here and the problem that we have in this society right now,’” he said.

(SD-Agencies)