Saga has pulled the plug on a custom social media site it built with the over 50s in mind after it became a platform for ‘racist, homophobic and anti-semitic comments’.
Saga Zone had only a few hundred registered users allowing a minority of individuals with outspoken views to dominate the platform, to the embarrassment of its creators.
In response the forums have been made ‘read only’ for a transition period until 26 February when it will be shut down entirely.
Paul Green, a Saga spokesman, said: “There were some particularly vicious exchanges recently about the Middle East and some people were banned after accusations of making anti-semitic or anti-arab comments.
“The majority are a good group of people but a minority caused concern with offensive racist or homophobic comments. We even discovered what I believe are called trolls with multiple online personalities, because messages were coming from the same computer – sometimes with names from both sexes.
“An online free-for-all might be alright for other social networks such as Twitter but expectations are different when there is the Saga logo in the top right-hand corner.”