In December 2023, the club already took action by completing a match with shirts without names on the back. Ajax then reported that players receive more than 1500 hate messages per month on social media and called to report on such messages.
With the help of main sponsor Ziggo, the club has developed a special module of the ‘Online Masters’ curriculum. “From discrimination and racism, to bullying and intimidation. Ajax sees that online the standards are increasingly blurring,” the club reports in a press release. “The danger is that this will grow the impact of Social Hate on upcoming generations. Children read along and think that this is a normal manners, which increases the acceptance level of this evil behavior among the youth.”
“To maintain the code of conduct, Ajax installs an advanced AI tool with which hate messages are detected and hidden,” the club writes. To bring the initiative to the attention, the leader in the Eredivisie on Sunday against NAC Breda plays in special competition shirts where the Ziggo logo takes place for the call “Silence Social Hate.”