Wimbledon chiefs said on Friday they had launched a social media monitoring service to protect players from online abuse.
It follows a similar “anti-online harassment and hate speech tool” that was rolled out at the French Open last year.
In another sign of growing awareness of the issue, artificial intelligence will be used at the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris to protect athletes.
Britain’s Harriet Dart said there were positives and negatives on social media after qualifying for the third round on Thursday.
“I’m sure today if I opened one of my apps, regardless of whether I won, I would also get a lot of hate,” she said.
Wimbledon tournament director Jamie Baker said the All England Club had taken steps to protect players, using a dedicated team and AI.
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βThis is the first year that we actually have a social media monitoring service specifically for the event,β he said.
“That’s not something you’ll see in the public domain at all. You won’t see us shouting about it, but we’re basically scrolling through social media for any of this kind of content and it means we can get information that they didn’t have before .
“We’re not just relying on what a player might say is happening to them, but if there’s something that’s a concern, then our security teams can basically step in and really help do something about it.”
Baker said it’s up to players how much they want to use the service.
βThe benefit of it is that we have the ability to formally record what’s going on, but we wouldn’t do any of those steps without actually engaging with the player and their teams and trying to get a feel for what’s going on. ” he said.
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“This is obviously the first time we’ve had it at our event, but tennis does a lot more than that now, so I think overall for the athletes it’s really positive that we’re taking this step.”
Source: AFP