The world's football governing body, FIFA, said on Wednesday that its digital monitoring systems identified 89,000 abusive social media posts during the World Cup group stage, 13 times more than during the 2022 tournament in Qatar.
Racist abuse up as FIFA records surge in harmful social media posts
FIFA's Social Media Protection Service (SMPS) scanned more than six million posts and comments, recording a significant rise in harmful content, up 33 per cent from 2022. Racist abuse accounted for 11 per cent of all offensive messages identified.
FIFA said the increase represented a three per cent rise in racist attacks compared with the group stage in Qatar and reflected a marked increase in the most offensive and abusive content across social media platforms.
FIFA launches social media protection service for tournament participants
In a statement, FIFA said the SMPS is available to all teams, players, coaches and match officials taking part in FIFA tournaments to protect them and their followers from discriminatory and abusive content.
The service uses a combination of technology and human moderation to detect, filter and block racist, discriminatory and threatening messages while also shielding followers of players from abusive content.
1,000 accounts under scrutiny
According to Samaa TV, FIFA said 225,000 posts were flagged for human review. Moderators confirmed 89,000 posts as abusive and action was taken, while nearly 1,000 accounts were referred for further investigation.
FIFA added that the expansion of the tournament from 32 teams in Qatar to 48 teams also contributed to the larger volume of content analysed.
Millions of abusive World Cup comments moderated
The service's automated moderation tools also hid nearly 181,000 hateful comments from team accounts.
Meanwhile, more than two million comments, including spam and content from bots or fake accounts, were moderated during the group stage, four times more than in 2022.
FIFA said the service also collects evidence for law enforcement agencies as part of its development. More than 100 cases exceeding legal thresholds were identified.
Dutch players Justin Kluivert, Quinten Timber and Crysencio Summerville were subjected to online racist abuse after missing penalty kicks in the Netherlands' defeat to Morocco in the last 32.
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