Overview
- FIFA’s Social Media Protection Service scanned 60.7 million comments on official channels and reported 240,676 hate messages during the 2026 World Cup.
- The SMPS said 9.2 million comments were hidden after review and that 812 of 1,606 players and officials were targeted by defamatory posts.
- One unnamed star received more than 10,000 insults, illustrating the heavy personal toll of the online attacks on individual players.
- FIFA forwarded 786 flagged items to law enforcement, while most flagged content remained handled through moderation and platform processes.
- The association announced plans to deploy improved detection tech aimed at both human- and AI-generated abuse, and the published report contains inconsistent figures on the share of racist messages that FIFA has not yet clarified.