A new study has found that racist abuse directed at England footballers during the 2026 World Cup was intensified by social media algorithms built to maximise user engagement and advertising revenue.
The research, carried out by anti-racism campaign group Hope Not Hate, examined more than 300,000 posts on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter, during the tournament. Investigators identified over 5,500 posts that contained explicit racist abuse aimed at England players.
According to the group, the scale of the abuse was not simply a matter of individual users posting hateful content, but was made worse by the platform's recommendation system. Because posts that provoke strong emotional reactions such as anger tend to keep users engaged for longer, Hope Not Hate argues that X's algorithm actively pushed this material into the feeds of a much wider audience than would otherwise have seen it.
Patrik Hermansson, a senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, said the platform has a financial incentive tied to this dynamic. "X is actually benefiting from this hate," he told BBC Sport. "It drives engagement on its platform and it effectively uses its algorithm to elevate and show it to more of its users."
Hermansson stressed that the abusive posts were not confined to obscure corners of the internet but were being surfaced prominently. "They show up in the recommendation feed - they are not obscure corners of this website, they are front and centre," he said, adding that this was a decision the platform did not have to make. "That's a choice it doesn't have to make and yet it does."
X has been contacted by BBC Sport for a response to the findings but has not yet commented.
The report also criticised the broader approach currently used to combat online racism, saying too much emphasis is placed on reactive measures rather than prevention. Tools such as blocking abusive accounts, reporting offensive messages, and platform suspensions do not, in Hermansson's view, tackle the underlying issue of how such content is amplified in the first place.
"X doesn't take racism seriously enough," Hermansson said. "We've seen it for a number of years now. There is no change or improvement."
He argued that platforms already possess the technical capability to adjust their algorithms during periods when abuse is likely to spike, such as major tournaments. Hermansson pointed out that the abuse tends to originate from a relatively small number of accounts before spreading widely through replies and shares. "It's actually a relatively small number of accounts and originating tweets that then get tons of replies," he said. "I think it's entirely feasible to stop this, or a vast amount of it."
One proposed solution from Hope Not Hate is for platforms to downrank posts that attract large volumes of abusive replies, reducing how often such content is recommended to other users.
Ahead of the new Premier League season, the organisation called on Ofcom, the UK's media regulator, to make fuller use of its existing powers under the Online Safety Act. Specifically, Hope Not Hate wants the regulator to ban algorithms that fuel the spread of abusive content and to formally classify major sporting events as "high risk" periods. Such a designation would require platforms to adopt stricter safety measures, proactively remove abusive material, and rapidly downrank content that is escalating into viral hate.
Responding to the report, Ofcom said it was continuing to press technology companies on safety standards. "We're pushing tech firms hard to make their services safer, and we'll be holding them to account if they don't," the regulator said in a statement to BBC Sport. Ofcom also referenced a partnership it formed with police forces and footballing organisations ahead of the World Cup aimed at addressing online abuse.
Based on reporting from BBC Sport.