Company’s work/activities related to sport: Areto Labs integrates advanced AI to enhance digital community management and content moderation across sports organisations. Their tools are instrumental for sports teams and entities like AC Milan and the United Rugby Championship, facilitating a welcoming online community. By managing online abuse, spam, and illegal streaming, Areto Labs ensures that sports communities are engaging and safe.

Sport(s) targeted: Football (soccer), ice hockey, rugby, rally driving, basketball, American/Canadian football, rugby league, surfing, athletics, lacrosse, Formula 1, basketball, tennis, Australian rules football, golf

Target group(s) protected: Team, leagues, fans, athletes/players, referees, coaches, social media staff, sponsors, special focus on women’s sports.

Approach/ Type of technology used for online abuse analysis: Areto uses machine learning to analyse and moderate online abuse across more than 18 languages automatically and in under a second, and allows each user to set their own community standards and abuse moderation thresholds. Their proprietary gender microaggressions dataset enhances their capability to detect hate speech and microaggressions more accurately than the best publicly available AI models.

Data statistics required for the analysis: Areto automatically pulls comments from users' social media accounts, so the data is always streaming into our database for immediate analysis and abuse removal, and deeper analytics for reporting. 

Achievements and outcomes: 

Ben O’Keeffe Story:

Rugby World Cup referee Ben O'Keeffe experienced a transformative improvement in his social media interactions during the 2023 tournament, thanks to Areto Labs. Facing the challenge of online abuse, Ben partnered with Areto Labs, utilising their multi-language detector and microaggression monitor, which led to a significant 65% reduction in negative comments on his Instagram. This change not only enhanced his online engagement but also his mental wellbeing, allowing him to focus more on his on-field performance without the distraction of negative social media chatter. The results were impressive: an 8% boost in positive interactions. This profound improvement in his social media experience reignited Ben's love for social media, highlighting the effectiveness of Areto's solutions in creating safer and more welcoming digital spaces for sports professionals.

Quick Facts:

Engagement: Boosted authentic comments by 78% on the New Jersey Devils' Instagram; Superfan detection increases lifetime value by 306%.

Safety: Detects 78% more abuse instances, including gender microaggressions; Sport NZ found a 53% increase in abuse detection with Areto's MAMO during Rugby World Cup 2021; Outperforms traditional models by catching 20% more abuse.

Time: Abuse auto-deletion saves 4 hours; 1-click abuse hiding saves 15 seconds per click, totaling 2 hours for every 500 comments.

Mental Health: Kayla Bushey's posting frequency increased by 700%, leading to a 300% rise in paid partnership requests, thanks to Areto's abuse moderation

Challenges and limitations: One of the primary challenges is the constant evolution of tactics used by bots online. These individuals often adapt their methods, such as substituting letters with numbers or using complex symbols, to evade detection by automated systems. Staying ahead of these ever-changing strategies requires continuous updates and refinements to algorithms and models.

The global fight against online abuse is a complex one. Legislation, societal understanding, and acceptance of the issue's prevalence and severity vary significantly across countries. This creates challenges in establishing a unified approach to protecting athletes, refs and others working in sports from online harassment. In response, Areto Labs adopts a flexible approach by allowing clients to define what constitutes acceptable behaviour within their communities. This avoids a one-size-fits-all solution and ensures the moderation technology aligns with specific community standards. These challenges underscore the critical need for clear guidance and guidelines about who is responsible for managing online abuse and what solutions exist that tackle the issue.

Recommendations for the project:

1. Harnessing AI for Scalable Protection: Encourage member nations to embrace AI-powered solutions that can not only detect and remove abusive content rapidly and at scale, but also identify repeat offenders for potential prosecution. This removes the burden of constant monitoring by human moderators, while also automatically removing harmful content at scale as soon as it’s posted, lessening the abuse’s potential for damage.
2. Empowering Users with Tools: Traditional online safety advice focuses heavily on responsible online behaviour. However, a crucial shift is needed. We propose the development of educational resources that equip athletes, teams, and fans with the knowledge of available tools to tackle online abuse effectively.

This educational initiative can help users:

• Learn about the tools available to them to remove abuse automatically without the burden of reporting
• Empower individuals to take action immediately
• Access resources for mental health and emotional well-being

3. To address the disproportionate online abuse faced by individuals based on identity factors like gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, and abilities, the project should encourage member nations to prioritise proactive protection strategies. This can be achieved by:

• Developing clear guidelines: Establish guidelines for sporting organisations to identify and remove abusive content proactively, reducing the reliance on victim reporting.
• Shifting the reporting burden: Explore alternative reporting mechanisms like automated reporting that lessen the emotional burden on victims, particularly those from equity-seeking groups who are less likely to report abuse but more likely to receive it.

The safety and well-being of athletes demands that we formally recognise online abuse as a critical element within all athlete and sport safeguarding guidelines and regulations. This is a non-negotiable safety and security issue and a breakdown in our duty of care when we neglect the digital space.

Here's why this is imperative:

• Online abuse is rampant: Athletes are subjected to relentless attacks, ranging from hate speech and bullying to threats of violence. This has devastating consequences for mental health and performance as well as the recruitment and retention of individuals in sport.
• Working conditions are compromised: A toxic online environment creates undue stress and undermines the positive, supportive atmosphere that people need to thrive.
• Duty of care unfulfilled: Organisations have a responsibility to protect athletes and their staff. Ignoring the online realm is a significant oversight, leaving many people exposed to harm.

Company website: https://www.aretolabs.com/

Contact person: 

Jacqueline Comer

[email protected]

Founder and CPO