Social media giant starts fightback against online abuse of athletes

Racist attacks and abuse of athletes has become an ugly problem, and some steps have been taken to police the trolls.

Carlton star Eddie Betts makes his feelings known. Picture:: Michael Klein

Athletes have been given the power to mute the racist and abusive trolls whose attacks via social media around the world have become so prevalent and damaging that a fightback was demanded.

A new set of features has been announced by social media giant Instagram that can help uses filter and even block out the sort of comments that have been plaguing sport.

It comes in the wake of attacks against AFL and NRL players in recent weeks and after growing calls for social media companies to better control what can and can’t be posted.

Last weekend Port Adelaide AFL star Aliir Aliir was subjected to racial abuse after his best on ground performance against Adelaide.

The Brisbane Broncos have also have supplied a dossier of abuse suffered by its players to the NRL integrity unit that could lead to criminal prosecution.

Aliir Aliir copped racial abuse after being best on ground in the Showdown. Picture: James Elsby/AFL Photos via Getty Images

AFLW star Tayla Harris also ignited a national discussion about sexist comments when targeted with abuse in 2019.

They are some instances in a long line, and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, revealed his platform wanted to “protect people” from being confronted with any abuse.

On Tuesday night Carlton veteran Eddie Betts also made an emotional plea, declaring he was “sick of it. I’m sick of fighting”.

In an attempt to give athletes some form of defence, Instagram has announced new features, including:

● The launch of “Limits”, the ability for people to limit comments and DM (direct message) requests during spikes of increased attention

● Stronger warnings when people try to post potentially offensive comments

● The global rollout of a “Hidden Words” feature, which allows people to filter abusive DM

requests

Carlton veteran Eddie Betts has had enough of online racism. Picture: Michael Klein

“We have a responsibility to make sure everyone feels safe when they come to Instagram. We don’t allow hate speech or bullying on Instagram, and we remove it whenever we find it,” Mosseri said.

“We also want to protect people from having to experience this abuse in the first place, which is why we’re constantly listening to feedback from experts and our community and developing new features to give people more control over their experience on Instagram and help protect them from abuse.”

The new “Limits” function allows users to automatically hide comments and requests from people who don’t follow them or who only recently followed them.

In the instance of Aliir, it was established the user who abused him only set up that account at the time they posted their offensive comments.

New Instagram warnings against people posting offensive material.

“Our research shows that a lot of negativity towards public figures comes from people who don’t actually follow them, or who have only recently followed them, and who simply pile on in the moment,” Mosseri said.

“We saw this after the recent Euro 2020 final, which resulted in a significant – and unacceptable – spike in racist abuse towards players.

“Limits allows you to hear from your longstanding followers while limiting contact from people who might only be coming to your account to target you.”

The new features will also warn people posting offensive comments and the list of potentially offensive words, hashtags and emojis that automatically filter out of comments has been expanded.

In the past week warning were issues about a million times per day on average to people when they were making comments that were potentially offensive. Of these about 50 per cent of the times the comment was edited or deleted by the user based on these warnings.

Tanya Hosch, the AFL’s general manager of inclusion and social policy, said the new tools were “encouraging”.

“This is an especially important step forward in the protection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players, and other players of colour, and women in our code who endure a disproportionate amount of abuse in online and offline spaces,” she said.

“There is more work to be done, and we’ll continue working with Facebook in their commitment to make their platforms safe for everyone.”

Originally published as Social media giant starts fightback against online abuse of athletes