Wimbledon unveils social media monitoring service to help players deal with online bullying… With AI-powered technology to help flag offensive comments to safety team and protect stars

• Tennis stars get access to social media monitoring service at Wimbledon
• The organizers have a team of people and artificial intelligence that monitors
• British No.2 Harriet Dart spoke out on Thursday about negative messages on the internet

Wimbledon has launched a crackdown on online abuse of players by launching a special social media monitoring service for the first time during the tournament.

British number one Harriet Dart has spoken about the pitfalls of social media following her victory over British number one Katie Boulter.

The organizers are well aware of the burden placed on players by the huge amount of deliberate abuse online and are using artificial intelligence (AI) as well as a special monitoring team to deal with this problem.

“This year, for the first time, we launched a social media monitoring service specifically for this event,” said tournament organizer Jamie Baker.

“It’s not something you’ll see in the public domain, you won’t see us talking about it, but we actually scroll through social media looking for this type of (offensive) content.

“That means we can get information that we haven’t had in the past, and we’re not just relying on what a player might say is happening to them. If there’s something that’s concerning, then our security teams can essentially step in and help deal with it.”

In the past, the French Open had its own service to monitor abuse directed at online players, and Wimbledon did not follow suit.

Players have various levels of monitoring available, with the option to select a more comprehensive service.

“There are two parts to this, and it all depends on how far they want to go with this service,” Baker said.

‘Without getting into the details… if they want the full service, there’s an opt-in element, but it actually allows us to really sift through the information and pick out the information that might help them.

“The bottom line is that if we have something that we think is concerning or worth reporting, we engage with the player and then take the next steps.

The benefit of having such a system is that we can officially register with the appropriate people there.

“We would not have taken these steps if we had not made contact with the player or his team to try to understand what was happening.”

Baker added: “We’re not going to step in and become the police, but it’s important to try and help (the players).”