FIFA to combat social media abuse

Together with FIFPro, the global players’ union, FIFA has started a project to find out if players are being abused on social media during international tournaments.

Beginning with the World Cup in Qatar, the service will monitor posts using algorithms across all social media platforms sent to the accounts of players, coaches, and match referees.

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It will be set up for all future men’s and women’s tournaments to scan for known terms of abuse and hate speech. When and if an abusive post is found, the content will be blocked and the intended recipient will not be able to see it.

On the sender’s side, however, the posts will still be viewable, which could give FIFA and FIFPro a chance to report the offender to the social media company and the police.

In a recent report published by FIFA tracking more than 400,000 social media posts sent during the final stages of the Euros in 2021, and the African Cup of Nations earlier this year, it was found that more than half the participating players across the two tournaments had been on the wrong end of abusive comments on social media.

A large number of these comments came from the same place as the player’s home country, and most of the comments that were reported were homophobic or racist.

FIFA says that there is a good chance of being able to find out who is behind the accounts.

Most famously, England players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka were on the wrong end of a torrent of racial abuse after missing penalties for England in the Euro 2020 final at Wembley.

Despite the increasing prominence of the issue, social media companies have been reluctant to take the issue seriously until now, although technological advances mean that it is increasingly easy to identify offenders.

There is definitely a profit motive, since the more people who use their services, the more money they make, so they don’t want to make decisions that go against this.

And, despite threats to act by lawmakers, so far the major social media companies have not yet been held to account for some of the content that they have allowed on their platforms.

For example, in the UK, a law was proposed that enabled the government to levy big fines against social media companies that failed to tackle, online abuse, and placed a duty of care on them to ensure they took swift action to remove illegal and abusive content.

However, the bill has yet to become law, and many online abusers continue to act with relative impunity.

Occasionally, people do face legal consequences for their online actions. Earlier this year, a 52-year-old British man was jailed for six weeks for sending malicious communications on Facebook, while another was given a suspended prison sentence and ordered to do 100 hours of community service for a similar offense.

This is just a drop in the ocean, though, compared to the online abuse that occurs every day. For all the good intentions behind the new initiative, it is not likely to do anything to improve the situation radically.