Soccer project tracking social media abuse identifies 300 people from World Cup posts

By GRAHAM DUNBAR
AP Sports Writer
GENEVA (AP) — A project using artificial intelligence to track social media abuse aimed at players at the 2022 World Cup identified more than 300 people whose details are being given to law enforcement. FIFA says the people made “abusive, discriminatory, or threatening posts (or) comments” on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube. The project created jointly by FIFA and the players’ global union FIFPRO used AI to help identify and hide offensive social media posts. About 20 million posts and comments were scanned and more than 19,000 were flagged as abusive.