The All England Lawn Tennis Club [AELTC] uses the Threat Matrix service, devised by data science firm Signify, which uses AI to monitor public-facing social media accounts.
A team of investigators then manually analyse what is flagged by the system – which covers X, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and TikTok – and escalate abusive and threatening content.
During Wimbledon it was applied to all players in the men’s and women’s singles and doubles, the mixed doubles, all players in singles and doubles qualifying, umpires and Wimbledon’s official accounts.
Up to the end of the quarter-final stage, 2,916 posts or comments were verified as abusive, threatening, or discriminatory and reported to platforms.
Of these, 132 were assessed as being of “moderate” or “high” threat level – prompting further investigation for potential security or law enforcement action – and “angry gamblers” were responsible for 37% of all detected abuse.
This was from a provisional total of 228,060 posts – both positive and negative – that were picked up by the system because they had been aimed at the monitored handles.
Since last year’s Wimbledon, enhancements have been made to Threat Matrix, to capture evolving terms and to address troll accounts that post the same abusive messages multiple times.
The year-on-year increase might reflect these changes in how abusive accounts operate.
