‘We’re seeing spikes year over year’: Edmonton tech company tracking hate speech in sports

An Edmonton tech company using artificial intelligence to moderate online feeds to address hate speech is seeing a surge in sports over the past year.

Hate speech in sports has surged over the past year, according to an Edmonton tech company. Kasey Machin with Areto Labs joined CTV Morning Live’s Kent Morrison to talk about how they’re using artificial intelligence to track online abuse in all forms.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Kent Morrison: Can you tell us about what your hate speech index is and how it works?

Kasey Machin: It’s basically a global benchmarking system, sort of like a consumer index, that we use to be able to track online abuse in all of its various forms across multiple different leagues and across the world. Gathering all of that information and being able to use that to benchmark, see different trends, it’s also a way to shift the conversation from, we know it’s happening, but now we see how much it’s happening, to what do we do about it?

Kent: Where are you seeing this uptick in hate speech? Are there specific targets?

Kasey: Generally, it’s increasing year over year, I think by about 120 per cent. But in certain categories, specifically around sexism and transphobia, we’re seeing spikes year over year, I think 220 per cent increases year over year, due to a number of different reasons, but there’s an explosion in women’s sports. Which is not only attracting a diverse audience, but then (being) disproportionately targeted, and some of those conversations are taking place online.

Kent: Can you tell us about the role that betting is going to play in this, or is playing in this? Because it’s becoming a bigger and bigger part of professional sports.

Kasey: We’ve seen a huge surge in the amount of online abuse due to betting. In fact, I think a couple of years ago there was a stat that came out that over 35 per cent of high-profile athletes had received some form of extreme online abuse due to someone with a betting interest. It’s interesting because online betting and legal betting has come into the foray, especially here in Canada and North America, and the amount, there’s all sorts of different complex intricacies at play when it comes to online sports, especially for brands, sports brands, global sports brands. So obviously for athletes, there’s a huge, huge surge.

Kent: What do we do about this now that we have the data?

Kasey: That was something that drove us to create Areto Labs. We all know it’s a problem. We can see that it’s a problem. We all realize that this is a problem, but the amount of manual labour that it takes to effectively manage and moderate your feeds, especially if you’re a global brand, is tough. It’s getting harder and harder every day, especially with different rules and regulations that come into play, like platform changes. So it’s really hard to keep up, not only with the manual labour of it, but also its impact on your mental wellness and your performance. That’s what it’s really about, is shifting the conversation from knowing it’s a problem to doing something about it, and at Areto Labs, that’s what we’ve created. Being able to moderate and automatically manage your feeds based on best practices and global standards does increase engagement. You’re able to grow diverse audiences and that’s critical, especially for underrepresented players or underrepresented leagues that rely on those streams in order to bring in not only audience, but engagement and revenue.