2026 World Cup / Social media: 89,000 abusive messages identified by FIFA during the group stage

News Tank Football - Paris - News #447135 - Published on 03/07/26 at 16:00
More than 10% of the abusive messages identified by FIFA contained racist abuse -

FIFA’s Social Media Protection Service identified 89,000 abusive messages on social media during the group stage of the 2026 World Cup, with more than one in ten containing racist abuse, the governing body announced on 1 July 2026.

More than six million posts and comments were analysed, of which 225,000 were referred for human review. Among these, 89,000 were confirmed as abusive. Around 1,000 accounts have been flagged for further investigation. Racist abuse now represent 11% of all detected online abuse, up three percentage points from the 2022 group stage.

Between 11 and 27 June, 2,028,214 comments containing "unwanted content and abuse generated by bots or fake accounts" were moderated.

All figures reported by FIFA’s moderation service have increased compared with the group stage of the…

More than 10% of the abusive messages identified by FIFA contained racist abuse -

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