More than half of footballers playing at the European Championship and African Cup of Nations suffered online abuse, a study published by FIFA revealed on Saturday. Much of the abuse came from fans of the players’ home nations. “Homophobic (40%) and racist (38%) comments provided the majority of the abuse,” said the independent report published to coincide with the United Nations International Day for Countering Hate Speech. This will involve scanning recognised hate speech terms published to identified social media accounts, and once detected, prevent that comment from being seen by the recipient and their followers. England’s Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were all targeted online following their penalty misses in the Euro 2020 final, leading to widespread calls for a clampdown on racist abuse on social media.

Source: Punch June 19, 2022 03:26 UTC