Twitter and Facebook have made it clear to Premier League clubs that they will never end the practice of allowing users to open anonymous accounts and that using forms of identification to verify them will not happen.
Instead, the social media giants will continue to toughen up the policing of online abuse in-house using their own technology.
It will be a huge disappointment to many players but that reality has already been accepted by the Government in preparing the Online Harms Bill, which attempts to strike a balance between freedom of speech and tackling abuse.