ZURICH (SWITZERLAND) (ITALPRESS) – Social media increasingly risks becoming a source of anxiety, stress, and depression for footballers. Ahead of World Mental Health Day, FIFA released an analysis conducted during the last World Cup by its Social Media Protection Service (SMPS). Out of more than 17 million posts and comments related to the World Cup, 240,000 were verified as offensive following human review.
Racist insults were on the rise (accounting for 20% of the total), threats of violence were recorded in 14% of cases, and xenophobic abuse represented more than one in ten offensive comments or posts—amounting to 12% of the total. The SMPS is tasked with protecting participants in FIFA events by hiding unwanted content, such as offensive comments and spam.
During the last World Cup, the SMPS moderation tool automatically analyzed 60.7 million user messages across official FIFA platforms and the channels of participating member associations. Of this total, 9.2 million messages—representing 15% of all interactions—were blocked and hidden from public view before reaching the general audience.
“On the eve of World Mental Health Day,” Gianni Infantino emphasized, “we are reinforcing FIFA’s commitment to protecting the football community from online hate through enhanced technologies capable of countering not only manually created content but also AI-generated images. During this year’s World Cup, in addition to analyzing over 17 million posts and comments, we identified 240,000 instances of abuse. Furthermore, we reported hundreds of accounts posting threatening content to law enforcement authorities for further action. We remain steadfast. FIFA’s SMPS is available to all football stakeholders—with the aim of supporting all 211 member associations and confederations—because we must unite to combat this reprehensible behavior, which causes suffering and undermines emotional well-being.”
Zurich officials reported that 786 accounts were referred to law enforcement for review. Of these, 232 were found to have posted particularly serious and threatening content—potentially posing a genuine safety risk—and were consequently prioritized for investigation.
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(ITALPRESS).
