FIFA intercepts over 7 million hateful messages—guess what topics they cover ?

Faced with the surge of verbal abuse polluting social media, world football’s governing body has reported alarming findings regarding its protection system (SMPS) during the 2026 World Cup, revealing the detection of over 7 million abusive and threatening posts targeting players, coaches, and match officials.

This staggering volume reflects an explosion in online hate, with a detection rate 14 times higher than that recorded during the 2022 tournament in Qatar, where 470,000 pieces of toxic content were neutralized.

To curb this phenomenon, the SMPS team deployed sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms to screen over half a million targeted messages, moderating a total of more than 53 million comments and posts since the tournament kicked off—a competition culminating in the final between Spain and Argentina.

The abuse observed went beyond mere digital moderation issues, prompting FIFA to refer over 1,000 credible threats to the relevant law enforcement agencies for legal action, while noting with concern that racist slurs alone accounted for 11% of all hateful content identified throughout the competition.