Playing Fair: How A Bot Can Help Cure A Pandemic

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a global sports blackout. Live sports were replaced with classic game reruns and sports documentaries, while sports organizations, leagues and media faced a dramatic and sudden halt to their revenue, and sports fans were locked out of stadiums. And to keep fans engaged with players and clubs during lockdowns to protect future revenue, many teams, leagues and media organizations invested in social media and digital platform innovations. 

When live sports hesitantly came back in varying degrees around the world in late 2020, for those sports organizations, leagues and media, athlete safety was paramount. Athletes were separated from their families in club and league “bubbles” to prevent the spread of the virus, and there were significant investments into safety innovations to keep fans safe on their return to stadiums. 

In 2021, a different and long-standing community virus caused another sports blackout. In April of this year, athletes, fans, commentators and organizations around the world united for a weekend to boycott social media in response to an ongoing failure of social media platforms to respond to abuse hurled at athletes, commentators and officials. 

The aftermath of this blackout was quite different from the “no sports” COVID-19 blackout. Social media giants have not sought to protect the wellbeing of the players who they encourage to use their platforms, sports organizations have posted content as per usual, and the pandemic of trolls has come roaring back to infect the field of fairplay, tweeting abuse to athletes, including 17-year-old Coco Gauff following her exit from the French Open this week: 

“Thank God that bitch @cocogauff lost. Ungrateful whore”. 

“A disgrace in defeat” 

“Gauf is bloody bitch she got 4 opportunity but she lost she is bloody fool”

Whack-a-troll

Just like COVID-19, there are many variants of social media trolls with different motivations, including some who lash out because they lost a bet on the match, some who may be looking for attention or those who simply enjoy upsetting others for entertainment. 

And just like COVID-19, anonymity enables the virus to thrive. You can’t walk down the street and spot a Twitter troll, just like how you can’t spot a person with COVID-19 or a specific variant. Unfortunately, the only proposed cure today is only useful on a case-by-case basis: organizations and social media platforms can suspend or remove individual social media accounts from a platform following a lengthy investigation, however the online abuse virus spreads very quickly,  so when one troll is contained, other troll accounts spring up. It’s a viral game of whack-a-troll.

Just as COVID-19 highlights the inequities of society, social media abuse also highlights inequalities in sport. Between male and female athletes, female athletes are three times more likely to receive abuse compared to their male counterparts, where 30% of female athletes report being abused online. The nature of the abuse directed at female athletes is also different to the abuse faced by male athletes. Abuse often contains sexualization including rape, comments on appearance or implications that the men in their lives need to “keep them in line”.  

Just like COVID-19, the social media toxicity virus has significant health impacts. The mental wellbeing of athletes facing the “drip, drip, drip” of abuse over time can be difficult to diagnose and measure, but can have equal if not greater long-term physical and mental health impacts than the immediate and devastating impacts of a a troll “pile on”, as sports broadcaster, Sonja McLaughlan, got following her post-match interview with the England Rugby captain Owen Farrell in February 2021. She tweeted: 

Toxic, embarrassing, disgraceful, appalling. Just some of the feedback I’ve had. 

Thanks for using @ sign so it’s all hit home. 

Now imagine getting inundated with abuse for doing your job. 

In my car crying. 

Finally, just like COVID-19, the response to the social media troll virus in sports must be multifaceted and bring together a range of subject-matter experts who can collaborate to provide a “wide net” response to contain, reduce and ultimately eradicate the virus. 

FairplayBOT - a culture-changing cure

Areto Labs’ contribution to eradicating the pandemic of social media abuse of athletes is our FairplayBOT. 

Our leading-edge technology uses machine learning to analyze tweets directed at athletes, commentators and officials in real-time, and automatically and immediately changes the conversation by cheering on positive interactions from fans or calling out those who don’t play fair. Athletes and genuine fans know immediately that you have their back and are taking positive action to support them. The technology works to change the overall culture of an online community through language over time by creating new rules of play for community participation.

Why not just encourage athletes to social distance themselves from social media? For athletes, especially women, social media is an essential part of building their brand, attracting sponsors and endorsements, and growing their fanbase. Avoiding social media is simply not an option today. And ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.

We provide organizations real-time insights on the nature and level of abuse athletes, commentators or officials experience, enabling organizations to provide proactive well-being or mental health support. 

How does it work? 

Well, any way you want! 

Working alongside our experts, organizations are in control of how they want to support their athletes to change the conversation. For example, when an athlete receives a toxic tweet, the bot can automatically respond to this in a range of ways: it could respond to the tweeter directly in the thread, it could respond to the athlete in the thread, giving them a message of support, or it could send a response without including the handle of the athlete or original tweeter. It’s really up to the goals of the organization and the needs of the athletes.

Our bot can be branded to represent any sports organization or one of their sponsors, enabling all stakeholders to get involved and positively support athletes.     

How can I get a culture-changing bot? 

That bit’s easy. Whether you’re ready to go or would like more information about FairplayBOT, simply contact info@aretolabs.com.