Mark Zuckerberg Chairman and CEO of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.) | Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
The upcoming months will feature several major international sporting events, including the Men’s UEFA EURO 2024 in Germany and the Olympic & Paralympic Games Paris 2024. Athletes and fans worldwide will use various apps to connect during these events. While most interactions are expected to be positive, there is a likelihood of abusive behavior. In response, multiple protections have been implemented across these platforms to safeguard users.
Since 2016, over $20 billion has been invested in safety and security, quadrupling the global team size to approximately 40,000 people, including 15,000 content reviewers for Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The company maintains strict rules against bullying, violent threats, and hate speech. Technology is employed to prevent, detect, and remove content that violates these policies. In the last quarter alone, action was taken against 95% of hate speech content before it was reported.
To enhance athlete safety on Instagram, users can turn off direct message (DM) requests entirely or use features like Hidden Words to filter offensive messages into a hidden folder. Additional features include:
- The Limits feature hides comments and DM requests from non-followers or recent followers.
- The Restrict option makes comments from restricted accounts visible only to the commenter unless approved.
- Controls allow users to manage who can tag or mention them.
- Moderation Assist helps manage comments on professional Pages or profiles on Facebook.
- Blocking prevents interaction from specific accounts across both platforms.
Recent improvements also target scam detection on Instagram and enable creators to remove fake followers in bulk.
Efforts are ongoing to encourage supportive behavior on Instagram through artificial intelligence that warns users about potentially offensive comments. Testing showed that such warnings led people to edit or delete their comments 50% of the time. New nudges encourage reconsideration before posting potentially offensive replies.
Specific measures address abuse targeting women by removing harmful content based on sex or gender identity. Features introduced last year aim to protect women from unwanted images and videos in DMs by requiring an invite before messaging someone who doesn’t follow them.
The company collaborates with athletes, teams, and sporting associations globally—including UEFA and IOC/IPC—to ensure awareness of safety policies and tools like Hidden Words. Cooperation with law enforcement continues for investigations involving valid legal requests for information.
