FIFA fights discrimination: the women’s national team receives more hate messages than men

class=”sc-cffd1e67-0 fmXrkB”>

The Swiss Football Association (SFV) caused a stir this week with a complaint against Tiktoker Mirco Casorelli, better known as ‘bireweichesouhund’. His videos about the Nati and singing the national anthem would violate the racism penalty standard, Article 261bis of the Criminal Code.

“An advertisement is completely exaggerated,” Casorelli told Blick. However, the SFV receives support from FIFA. “Anyone who insults or threatens someone has no place on social media. We support our member associations in the fight against hate on social media,” the world association said upon request.

FIFA takes action against hate

To combat discrimination on social media, FIFA itself launched the ‘Social Media Protection Service’ in November 2022. The goal is to monitor and moderate hate messages. In recent months, the service has been used at a total of eight FIFA tournaments, including the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar and the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

The Swiss national men’s team received targeted messages against individual players during the World Cup in Qatar. However, very little offensive, threatening or discriminatory content could be identified targeting the official Nati accounts.

5.1 million posts reviewed

Things look a little different for the women’s national team and the World Cup last summer. “There was a greater number of insults aimed directly at players. The majority of the insults were of a sexual nature, although homophobic insults also stood out,” FIFA said. The national team’s accounts were also regularly attacked.

In total, FIFA monitored 2,111 player, staff and team accounts on five different social media platforms (X, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok and YouTube) during the tournament in Australia and New Zealand. Of the total 5.1 million messages and messages monitored, 103,000 were flagged by an AI and ultimately checked by humans. 7085 were ultimately verified as abusive and reported to the respective platforms. A total of 117,000 comments are hidden.

Every fifth player was treated with hostility

With almost 4,000 flagged hate comments, the American players were by far the most hostile. They are followed by Argentina (c. 1650) and England (900). 67 percent of identified accounts sending hate messages are from North America. This is followed by Europe (21 percent) and South America (six percent).

One in five players fell victim to discriminatory, offensive or threatening content during the 2023 World Cup. The number of homophobic comments and posts was almost twice as high as at the 2022 Men’s World Cup.

Source : Blick