New Professional Tennis Initiative Aims to Stop Online Player Harassment in 2024 – Boxscore News
As per the initial report in Reuters, this initiative is set to launch on January 1st and aims to identify and take measures against abusers who target players participating in partner tournaments sanctioned by the involved organizations, the ITF World Tennis Tour, WTA Tour events, Wimbledon, and the US Open.
The Threat Matrix, developed by the AI company Signify Group, will utilize AI to monitor players’ public-facing social media for abusive and threatening content, providing a specialized and proactive approach to addressing online abuse. The governing bodies have expressed their commitment to taking all available measures against identified abusers.
Online abuse of tennis players, especially women, has been a prevalent issue for years. As Attorney Krenar Camili points out, “Over the past few years it has become exponentially easier for online abusers to target their prey, especially high-profile public figures. Any initiative aimed at making online abusers more accountable is a win for Internet safety.”
While the introduction of the Threat Matrix service reflects a significant step towards providing a safer online environment for players and addressing the challenges of online abuse in professional tennis, how the service works is interesting.
The Threat Matrix service, developed by the AI company Signify Group, is a specialized tool designed to identify and address online abuse, particularly targeting athletes, staff, fans, clubs, leagues, and brands. It offers online threat identification, monitoring, and analysis, aiming to protect and support individuals and organizations affected by online abuse.
The service utilizes AI to capture abuse from social media, flag and report racist accounts or groups, identify fixated threats, conduct network mapping, and provide support for protection services and sponsors. By de-anonymizing dangerous threats, Threat Matrix aims to ensure that abusers do not go unpunished.
The service will be used to monitor players’ public-facing social media for abusive and threatening content, providing a specialized and proactive approach to addressing online abuse. Threat Matrix supports the identification of abusers, against whom all available measures will be taken, as expressed by the tennis governing bodies involved in the initiative.
While there is little doubt that this new technology will be effective in identifying online abuse, what is ultimately going to be the key is the action taken against online abusers. If these governing bodies are quick to report and develop a strong working relationship with their legal and regulatory partners who have the power to finally make online abusers accountable, then the Threat Matrix initiative will not only be a huge win for professional tennis, more sports will follow.
But those of us who very closely follow tennis – especially women’s tennis – can and should reserve some skepticism. As WTA star Daria “Dasha” Kasatkina publicly shared in October, online abuse of women on the WTA Tour is wildly out of control.
Kasatkina detailed daily abuse, aimed at her whether she won or lost a match. Much of this is being fueled by the fact that tennis is a sport that gamblers love because of its almost year-round daily action. And 2023 was a massive year for revelations of the depth and scope of gambling on tennis, led by the Washington Post’s superb reporting on the issue.
None of this will change. More people will bet on tennis and a fraction of those often desparatw gamblers will be incensed when a player who they bet on loses or a player who they bet against wins. Add into the mix that people are simply far more toxic online than they would have the inclination or nerve to be in person, and we have a far more solid iceberg of a problem here than it first appears to be.
If this new initiative with Threat Matrix can chip away at this problem, that’s great. But, again, until we see the system work on professional tennis and online abusers actually be held accountable, we should reserve judgment.
Because professional tennis has such a remarkably/ridiculously long season (close to 11 months), we won’t have to wait long to see the results. The first tournaments of the year begins in Australia next week, then it’s full-on tennis week after week after week. Here’s hoping that this new initiative makes an immediate difference to protect players and hold online abusers accountable.
About Aron Solomon
