Athletes are often victims of cybercrime. Sometimes they even receive death threats. A limit has long been crossed for German sport.
When they are successful, athletes are usually the celebrated heroes. If not, they will quickly be targeted on the Internet and will be insulted, harassed and threatened. There are enough examples of victims from German sport: whether football stars like Jonathan Tah, winter athletes like biathlete Vanessa Voigt or summer athletes like the modern pentathlete Annika Zillekens, who used to compete under the last name Schleu – they have all had to endure insults or even death threats in the past let yourself be carried away.
German sport is now fed up with this hate on the internet – so-called hate speech. He wants to take rigorous action against internet crime in the future and especially with a view to the upcoming European Football Championship and the Olympic Games in the summer. The German Football Association (DFB) and the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) made this clear in Frankfurt am Main. “We will protect our athletes, not only, but especially during major sporting events where they are particularly the focus,” said DOSB President Thomas Weikert.
Artificial intelligence should help
In order to identify hate comments, artificial intelligence (AI) will play an important role at the Olympics in Paris. With the help of AI, attacks against athletes’ social media channels should be filtered out before publication and offer the opportunity to report serious violations and file targeted charges.
Weikert explained that the athletes will be offered protection and help for their social media channels. “We don’t accept group-related misanthropy, racist insults or even threats. But we don’t want any for other reasons either – because the hoped-for success doesn’t happen, because the last runner in the biathlon relay receives two penalties, because the decisive seven-meter penalty is rejected, because a horse shys away.”
The IOC is also pursuing a similar concept to the DOSB for Paris. It was said that the aim was to use a system based on artificial intelligence to protect athletes and officials at the Olympic Games from discrimination on social media. The system will monitor thousands of accounts on all major social media platforms in real time and will therefore be available to 15,000 athletes and more than 2,000 officials.
DFB, DOSB and the German Football League (DFL) announced that they would cooperate closely with law enforcement authorities and consistently file criminal charges if violent, racist or discriminatory language is used. According to the company’s own information, it works with the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) of the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office, which maintains contact with partner departments in the federal states.
Demand on politics
In order to better investigate hate on the Internet, the associations are calling on politicians to make law enforcement easier. According to the DFB, DOSB and DFL, insults and slander, for example, can currently only be prosecuted if the athlete submits a written criminal complaint for each posting.
From the perspective of the associations, criminal prosecution must be made possible even without an express criminal complaint. This is already possible for politicians. They want to increase the pressure on politicians so that this also applies to sport, said Weikert. Benjamin Krause from ZIT supports this suggestion. “In my view, this is a sensible proposal above all because it would make law enforcement much easier for us.”
One of the triggers for taking stronger action against hate online were three international football tournaments last year in which the DFB’s junior national teams took part. At the U21’s European Championship opener against Israel (1-1), this situation “escalated” after two penalties were missed, said DFB Vice President Ronny Zimmermann. “There was an incredible amount of disgusting news and reports on our website against the two penalty takers.”
Social media has many advantages, said national soccer player Jonathan Tah in a video message. “Because it’s just that way that people can be close to their idols and role models.” Because of the anonymity, a lot of “negativity” can also be spread, he said. The 28-year-old has also received hate comments after games. “That didn’t feel good.” This makes it all the more important to talk about this topic.
Cooperation shows success in investigations
A somewhat long-standing cooperation between the DFB and the ZIT shows that tackling hate online is not a hopeless battle, despite anonymity. As part of the cooperation, 45 investigations into online hate speech have been initiated so far, Krause said. 15 suspects were “identified beyond doubt”.
Krause and his team have been trying to identify hate speech on social platforms for around five years. “You have to say, in the beginning our identification rate was less than 30 percent. Now our identification rate for individual platforms is up to 80 percent and higher.” On average, the identification rate is just over 50 percent. But they are not yet satisfied with that, emphasized Krause. He made it clear that the identification rate also depends on the platform. “You can investigate better on one platform than on the other.”
Those involved did not specifically address how good or bad the Tiktok platform is. Both the DFB and the DOSB recently entered into a partnership with Tiktok, which is operated by the Chinese company ByteDance. From the point of view of the two associations, there is no conflict. “If you have a partnership, you may also have better access to the decision-makers and be more likely to bring about change,” said Zimmermann. It’s also about spreading positive thoughts on these platforms.
dpa
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