The British Olympic Association has criticised social media sites for not acting quickly enough following cyber-bullying allegations.
Great Britain speed skater Elise Christie revealed earlier this week that she had received threatening messages online, which has led to BOA member Darryl Seibel to call on Twitter and Facebook to do more to prevent similar cases happening again.
"Why are the service providers getting a free pass? It's unconscionable," Seibel is quoted as saying by BBC Sport. "They provide the portal. They have full sight of what's going on." [Some of the messages were] quite distasteful. It is worrying to see just how easy it is for individuals to use social media as a vehicle to bully and harass people.
"It has been our experience that when asked, service providers such as Twitter do act quickly in shutting down sites or removing offensive content. I do believe service providers must be a part of the solution and probably could do more to help keep these things from happening.
"We embrace social media. We think it can be a very effective way of communicating with a number of different audiences, particularly young people. For many of our athletes, social media is a part of their life.We provide our athletes with guidance on the most effective ways to use social media. We wouldn't want athletes to have their Olympic experience defined by the amount of time they spend on social media."
Christie still has the 1000m event to come, which gets underway on Tuesday.
Daniel Lewis
