Japan’s authorities have a warning for trolls planning to target competitors at this year’s Asian Games: You are being watched. – Copyright AFP\/File Yuichi YAMAZAKI<\/p>\n
Andrew MCKIRDY<\/p>\n
Japan is fighting back against online abuse of athletes and sports authorities have a warning for trolls planning to target competitors at this year\u2019s Asian Games: You are being watched.<\/p>\n
Online abuse is felt by athletes all over the world, affecting their performances and mental health, leaving them fearing for their safety and even causing them to quit their sports.<\/p>\n
Japan is no exception and efforts are belatedly being made to tackle the problem, from dedicated lawyers to teams monitoring social media for offensive posts.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven a single negative comment can cut deeply,\u201d Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC) official Misa Chida told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cAthletes don\u2019t want to see things like that, so a lot of them choose not to look at social media at all, and that means they miss the 99 percent of messages that are supportive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a real shame.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chida was part of a dedicated team of JOC officials monitoring social media at the Milan-Cortina Olympics in February.<\/p>\n
Six staff members in Milan and 22 in Tokyo checked around the clock for posts abusing Japanese athletes, using both manual and AI searches.<\/p>\n
They worked in conjunction with Meta \u2014 owner of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp \u2014 and Japanese company LINE Yahoo.<\/p>\n
The team asked social media companies to take down almost 2,000 posts, and succeeded in having nearly 600 removed.<\/p>\n
Social media companies have often been accused of not doing enough to crack down on abuse on their platforms.<\/p>\n
The JOC said they plan to repeat their monitoring activities at their home Asian Games, which are being held in Nagoya and the wider Aichi area on September 19-October 4.<\/p>\n
On top of that, Asian Games organisers told AFP that they will run a wider monitoring programme aimed at protecting athletes from all competing countries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now understand what kinds of comments appear on a daily basis and how they upset athletes,\u201d said JOC official Hirofumi Takeshita.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve learned how much energy we need to devote to this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Hope your family dies\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
The JOC is not the first sporting organisation to carry out a social media monitoring programme.<\/p>\n
The International Olympic Committee ran one in more than 35 languages at the 2024 Paris Games and there have also been initiatives in football and tennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs awareness of these initiatives grows among athletes, staff and everyone working on the ground, that in itself contributes to a greater sense of psychological safety,\u201d said Chida.<\/p>\n
Japan has been relatively late to the party, according to lawyer Shun Takahashi, who leads a seven-strong legal group dedicated to protecting athletes from online abuse.<\/p>\n
Takahashi says his group, founded in 2024, is a \u201csafe haven\u201d for athletes, many of whom feel uncomfortable talking about the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey worry that showing vulnerability might lead a coach to bench them or that others will see them as weak,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany athletes are raised with the idea that they must always be strong and they don\u2019t want to be perceived otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n
Takahashi\u2019s group offered support in the case of Taiki Sekine, a professional baseball player who last year took legal action against online abusers.<\/p>\n
Sekine, who received messages such as \u201cI hope your whole family dies in an accident\u201d, has won several settlements and lodged criminal complaints against the worst cases.<\/p>\n
The domestic nature of Sekine\u2019s case made it easier to prosecute than social media abuse that crosses international borders.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Long way to go \u2013<\/p>\n
Takahashi says legal action has \u201ca deterrent effect\u201d on online trolls, many of whom he says are in their teens or early 20s.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes them realise the risk involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But while Japan is now taking a proactive approach to online abuse, those involved say there is still a long way to go.<\/p>\n
Less than a third of the posts that the JOC\u2019s Olympic monitoring team requested be deleted were actually taken down by social media companies.<\/p>\n
Takeshita said the tech firms were \u201cvery cooperative\u201d but admitted their view of which posts were offensive did not always match up.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, there was a gap, but it was a gap that we were able to identify by actually doing this work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s better than having an unidentified gap that never gets bridged. Now that we know where the differences lie, we can work to close them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan’s authorities have a warning for trolls planning to target competitors at this year’s Asian Games: You are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,1236,700,8,1237,33],"class_list":{"0":"post-925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-japan","8":"tag-95","9":"tag-asiad","10":"tag-internet","11":"tag-japan","12":"tag-jpn","13":"tag-nihon"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}