Football abuse: Premier League and WSL stars targeted by death and rape threats
In an office in central London, Signify’s small team quietly reviews thousands of posts.
Every contentious moment during the match increases the number of abusive messages.
Pop posts containing monkey slurs and racial slurs, rape threats against managers’ family members, and even death threats all stemmed from actions on the football field.
Every message that the AI system deems abusive is double-checked by humans, who only count messages that violate the social media platforms’ own rules as verified abuse.
The most significant increase in abusive posts occurred during Tottenham’s dramatic 2-2 draw with Manchester United on 8 November; In this match two goals were scored in stoppage time and both club managers and many players faced intense abuse afterwards.
In the messages seen by the BBC, death threats were sent against Amorim, and one of them included the phrase ‘Kill Amorim, someone should learn that dirty Portuguese’.
The Online Safety Act, which comes into force in October 2023, imposes a legal duty of care on social media platforms.
This means they are legally obligated to proactively detect and remove illegal content such as threats, harassment or hate speech. Ofcom is now the independent regulator responsible for ensuring compliance of platforms.
But social platforms argue that the right to freedom of expression makes them reluctant to censor or remove content.
Signify insists the serious problem of abuse and threats posted online is worsening.
“We have seen an approximately 25% year-over-year increase in the levels of abuse we detect,” said Jonathan Hirshler, the company’s CEO.
“We understand the platforms’ stance on freedom of expression, but some of the things we are talking about are very serious.
“Truly disgusting death threats and truly horrific, violent content. If free speech absolutists read some of these messages, they wouldn’t question why some of these were being reported and why action was needed.”
