Social Media Fails to Curb Racist Emojis Aimed at Soccer Stars
- Algorithms to detect abuse perform poorly on emojis: study
- Twitter, Facebook say they removed posts, suspended accounts
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A wave of online racism aimed at some of England’s Black soccer players has highlighted how social media companies’ content moderation systems are failing to monitor the use of emojis.
On Sunday, England’s men’s soccer team, playing in their first major tournament final since 1966, fell to Italy on penalties. In the aftermath, a wave of racist abuse was leveled at three Black England players -- Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka -- and messages on social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram included monkey and banana emojis.