Hope Not Hate: X Algorithm Amplified World Cup Racism
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- Hope Not Hate analyzed more than 300,000 posts on X during the World Cup and identified over 5,500 explicitly racist posts targeting England players.
- X's recommender algorithm pushed toxic content into millions of feeds because outrage-generating posts drive longer engagement and advertising revenue, the report argues.
- Jude Bellingham was the most targeted player by total volume, while Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo experienced the highest proportion of racist posts relative to total mentions; Djed Spence received a distinct stream of anti-Muslim abuse after converting to Islam.
- Patrik Hermansson of Hope Not Hate told BBC Sport that X "is actually benefiting from this hate" and called for Ofcom to designate major sporting events as "high risk" under the Online Safety Act.
- Hope Not Hate proposed downranking posts that attract large volumes of abuse and requiring platforms to deploy safety-by-design rules during predictable spikes, arguing the tools to do so already exist.
- The FA said "all players have the right to play without being exposed to hateful, discriminatory and distressing content online" and urged service providers to take "all of the necessary steps to create a safer life online for everyone."
- Ofcom said it is "pushing tech firms hard to make their services safer" and pointed to a new partnership with police and footballing bodies formed ahead of the World Cup to tackle online abuse.
Why it matters: The report reframes online racism as an algorithmic amplification problem rather than a content-moderation problem, noting that a small number of originating tweets attract disproportionate engagement-driven reach. If Ofcom adopts Hope Not Hate's call to designate major sporting events as "high risk," platforms like X would face statutory pressure under the Online Safety Act to redesign recommendation behavior during predictable hate spikes — shifting the burden from individual victims and reactive takedowns to platform architecture itself.
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