News

FIFA Will Use AI To Protect Footballers From Hate Speech

The new tool will look for recognized hate speech terms on social media platforms and prevent comments that contain them from reaching their intended recipients.

Published

4 years ago

June 22, 2022

David Morelo

fifa will use ai to protect professional footballers from hate speech

Qatar Supreme Committee For Delivery & Legacy

The FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar is scheduled to take place in five months, and football fans around the world are already looking forward to the spectacle. Unfortunately, not all fans express their excitement or disappointment nicely.

According to FIFA’s recently published report, which examined over 406,987 social posts across Twitter and Instagram targeting players and coaches for the EURO 2020 Final (England versus Italy) and AFCON 2022 Final (Senegal versus Egypt), 55 percent of players in both tournament finals received some form of online abuse.

The two most common types of online abuse were homophobic slurs and racism, with a majority of abusers coming from the player’s home nation.

Determined to protect players from the abuse they receive online, FIFA has partnered with FIFPRO, a worldwide representative organization for professional footballers, to launch AI-powered in-tournament moderation tools.

“Our duty is to protect football, and that starts with the players who bring so much joy and happiness to all of us by their exploits on the field of play,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino. “We want our actions to speak louder than our words and that is why we are taking concrete measures to tackle the problem directly.”

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The new tool will look for recognized hate speech terms on social media websites and prevent comments that contain them from reaching their intended recipients and their following, minimizing their reach. FIFA could also report abuse to the relevant social networks and contact law enforcement authorities to further investigate.

“This detection is not only there to protect football and to avoid the damaging effects that these posts can cause, but also to educate current and future generations who engage with our sport on social media as well as on the field of play,” added the FIFA President.

The role of artificial intelligence in the detection of hate speech is growing rapidly. In the first quarter of 2020, Facebook, estimated that AI proactively detected 88.8 percent of the hate speech content the social network removed, an increase of 8.6 percent compared with the quarter before that.

Related Topics:Artificial Intelligence FIFA Qatar

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YouTube Rolls Out Supervised Children’s Accounts Across MENA

An industry-first feed timer lets parents cap Shorts scrolling. Access can also be switched off entirely ahead of exam season.

Published

12 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Dana Saadeh

YouTube

YouTube has launched supervised kid accounts across the Middle East and North Africa, giving parents a way to hand their children the main YouTube app without handing over all of it. Announced in Dubai on July 2, the accounts are built directly into the platform rather than the standalone YouTube Kids app, and are aimed at families who feel a child has outgrown the curated library but isn’t ready for the open feed.

Parents can choose from three content settings, each broadly aligned with international content ratings. Explore covers educational videos, tutorials, arts and crafts, and dance. Explore More adds gaming and live streams. Most of YouTube opens up almost everything except videos rated 18+ or deemed inappropriate for supervised accounts.

The standout tool is an industry-first Shorts feed timer, which lets parents set daily limits on short-form scrolling. Set it to zero and Shorts disappears altogether – a lever YouTube suggests parents might pull ahead of exam season. Other protections are on by default for all users under 18: “Take a Break” and “Bedtime” reminders, no personalized ad targeting, autoplay switched off, and no ability to upload videos or write comments. The accounts are optional, and parents can end supervision at any time.

The kid accounts join supervised teen accounts already available across the region, which notify parents by email when a teenager uploads a video or starts a live stream.

“YouTube has been a huge part of families’ lives across this region for over 20 years,” said Javid Aslanov, head of YouTube Middle East and North Africa, citing Kantar research showing 95% of viewers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE agree YouTube has top content in education and learning.

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“It’s essential that we protect young people in – not from – the digital world,” added Garth Graham, YouTube’s head of health.

The new settings are rolling out gradually across the MENA, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Iraq. The latest features can be set up through Family Center in the YouTube app or via Google Family Link.