Comparing the 2023 and 2022 World Cups, female footballers are, in percentage terms, the victims of insults on social media more often than their male colleagues.
This emerges from a report published on Monday (December 11, 2023) by the world association FIFA. Accordingly, the proportion of female players who were insulted was 29 percent higher than that of male players who were insulted.
FIFA said it had 5.1 million for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand Social media-Posts in 35 different languages analyzed for offensive content. At the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar, four times as many contributions were examined.
Homophobic, sexual and sexist
Homophobic, sexual and sexist insults accounted for almost half of the offensive messages detected, the world association said. A fifth of all World Cup players received targeted discriminatory, insulting or threatening messages at the 2023 tournament.
SMPS system protects players
FIFA used the SMPS system for the investigation (Social Media Protection Service), which was used for the first time at the 2022 Men’s World Cup. According to FIFA, the service uses artificial intelligence (AI) to filter out hate messages that are then not displayed to players. “There should be no place on social media for those who insult or threaten anyone, whether at FIFA tournaments or elsewhere”said FIFA President Gianni Infantino.