FIFA Social Media Protection Service
Tackling online abuse at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023™
The FIFA Social Media Protection Service Report represents a summary analysis of all monitoring and moderation activities carried out during FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™.
The report covers SMPS activities across all major platforms including X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, and is supplementary to the daily reports provided to FIFA across the tournament.
Social Media Protection Service at the FIFA Women's World Cup 2023™
Posts / comments analysed
Comments hidden
Posts / comments flagged by AI and reviewed by humans
Posts / comments verified as abusive and reported to platforms
Unique accounts detected sending abusive messages
accounts identified for real-world action
Levels of abuse
During the FIFA Women’s World Cup Australia & New Zealand 2023™ protective coverage was set up for the following participants:
697 Players and Coaches with 1,805 active accounts
29 Officials with 37 active accounts
32 Teams with 202 active accounts
35 Ex-Players / Media with 63 active accounts
4 active tournament accounts
Coverage spanned across the five major social media platforms of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube:
The service’s proactive monitoring capability scanned over 5.1 million posts and comments on X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube throughout the tournament.
The system flagged 103,000 posts/comments as containing language that had or could be used in an offensive way. This dataset was then reviewed by a team of expert analysts with a double human triage process to ensure that no posts were incorrectly attributed, removing the presence of false positives. This led to a final set of 7,085 posts/comments being confirmed by the service provider as abusive, discriminatory or threatening, which were then reported to platforms for breaking their community guidelines. In many cases, the offending posts were removed by the social platform in question as a direct result of being reported by FIFA.
FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ saw discriminatory, abusive or threatening content targeted at over 150 players, but two teams stood out as key targets – the USA and Argentina.
Making up almost 50% of all detected abuse across the tournament, Sexist, Sexual and Homophobic messages were the weapon of choice to target female footballers.
There has been a noticeable increase of targeted abuse connected to political statements of support or commiserations. With the largest segment of politically motivated abuse coming from the US market, it’s interesting to note that the next FIFA World Cup™ will take place in the same region, crossing over with campaigning for the US Midterm elections.
Content was subject to moderation, monitoring or reporting where it included a reference – whether express or implied – to any one or more of the reasons listed by Article 4 of the FIFA Statutes, where the context may be reasonably concluded to be harmful.
DISCRIMINATION of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of race, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, disability, religion, political opinion or wealth, birth or sexual orientation is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
Additionally, any content which may be deemed to include threat of harm to the subject or their family members was automatically included for assessment.
Discrimination is a criminal act. With the help of this tool, we are identifying the perpetrators and we are reporting them to the authorities so that they are punished for their actions. Our position is clear: we say no to discrimination.
Trends and insights
There were several flashpoints during the tournament, with the largest single of targeted abuse coming following the USA exit of the World Cup after a penalty defeat to Sweden. The second-largest volume of abuse was around the final match between England and Spain, various types of abuse were seen on both sides.
Abuse timeline
| Incident | Date |
| Noticeable and reported spikes of abuse targeting the USA and Argentine player | Jul 19 - Jul 25 |
| USA draw against Portugal to make it to the group stages | Aug 1 |
| Argentina exit World Cup after losing to Sweden | Aug 2 |
| USA exit World Cup after penalty defeat to Sweden, leading to pile-on of abuse including replies to commiserations by figures like President Biden | Aug 8 |
| France exit World Cup after penalty loss to Australia | Aug 12 |
| England Men's footballer recipient of abuse after congratulating England team for reaching the final | Aug 18 |
| World Cup final between England and Spain, various types of abuse seen on both sides | Aug 18 |
The Final of FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ was a tight match – won 1-0 by Spain over European Champions England.
BEFORE THE FINAL
Issues were detected in the build-up to the Final, particularly around the England team. News that members of the UK Royal Family were choosing not to attend the game and the UK Prime Minister wishing the team luck both generated messages containing abusive content (a common trend across this study).
DURING THE FINAL
As the losing team, England’s official accounts received the initial incidents of detected abuse, with specific players singled out for attention.
The US match official refereeing the final received abuse on X (formerly Twitter) following her involvement in a penalty decision (called by VAR).
AFTER THE FINAL
Spanish players received targeted abuse, with a more complex set of triggers including congratulatory messages from politicians (another common trigger).
In the aftermath of the Final, the incident involving Spanish FA President Luis Rubiales and a Spanish player created a significant spike of posts / comments
These incidents generated the largest spike of abusive, discriminatory and violent content across the tournament.
On the day of FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ Final and 24hrs after…
Posts / comments analysed
Posts / comments flagged by AI and reviewed by humans
Posts / comments verified as abusive and reported to platforms*
comments hidden by SMPS (player / coach / team accounts)
* Abuse totals based on the number of reported breaches of platform’s own community guidelines.
American players top the chart – predominantly politically-motivated abuse targeted 2-3 key players. Argentinian players are in second position due primarily to the targeting of one player.
English and Spanish players are in the top 5 due to the volume of verified incidents and making it to the final of the competition (i.e. longevity of participation in the tournament was a factor in the volume of abuse targeting these teams).
Players at the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™ were 29% more likely to be targeted with online abuse vs players at the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™. This is significant given the increasing viewership for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™, indicating a possible trend as TV / online audiences grow.
Detected segments of abuse were surprisingly similar across both World Cup events, with the exception of Homophobia, which was almost twice as big (as a percentage of overall verified abuse) at FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™.
Real-world action
As part of the Social Media Protection Service, teams and players participating in the tournament were offered access to software that – with the account holder’s permission – could automatically and instantly hide abusive and offensive comments on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube only.
Through the moderation element of the service, a total of 403,715 comments were hidden from public view before the targeted recipient or their followers had to see their contents.
In order to support real-world action being taken against those who sent online abuse to teams and players taking part in the tournament, Social Media Protection Service implemented a tiering system to grade the severity of the comment/post in question:
Tier 3:
The number of identified and verified account owners detected from posts sent.
Tier 2:
The number of accounts being reviewed as part of the SMPS initiative. Many of these accounts will continue to be analysed in the months following the event
Tier 1:
Represents accounts that are likely to require a disproportionate level of resource to fully identify. Recommendations for action therefore focus on accounts marked Green and Amber.
7,085 accounts were recorded sending abuse or threat across the tournament. 3,570 of those accounts were graded as having posted comments that fell into tier one and, of those, 628 have had their identity verified by the service provider.
It was possible to identify the locations of the 7,085 accounts that sent abuse during the tournament. 67% came from North & Central America, while 21% came from Europe.
Verified information about the aforementioned 628 accounts has been made available by FIFA for relevant Member Associations and jurisdictional authorities to support real-world action being taken against those who sent abusive, discriminatory and threatening comments to participating teams and players during the FIFA World Cup.
Click here to read the full report.