Emirati former rally driver and current president of the FIA, Mohammed Ben Sulayem, recently confirmed that the motorsport’s governing body will be taking important steps with the goal of tackling online abuse in Formula 1 directly to social media platforms.
The FIA’s actions come following a recent case which involved FIA steward Silvia Bellot who was targeted at the end of the United States Grand Prix, which was held last month in Austin. The Spanish motorsport official was one of four stewards which decided on a protest lodged by Haas following the USA Grand Prix at COTA that claimed Fernando Alonso’s Alpine car had been driven in an unsafe condition after its in-race contact with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll.
Former Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso received a 30-second time penalty after the race, which sent him out of the points zone, a call which led to a lot of criticism and abuse on social media directed towards Silvia Bellot, who was considered the main responsible. She received offensive hatred on social media platforms, which even included death threats.
In a recent press release published the FIA a few days ago, president Ben Sulayem pointed out that the level of online toxicity had reached a crisis point, and said it was time to unite, and to hit back at such unacceptable behavior.
Here is the statement released by the Federation on Tuesday:
Recently one of the FIA female stewards, Silvia Bellot, was the subject of death threats. It is utterly deplorable that a volunteer such as Silvia or any of our marshals and officials, who volunteer their time to allow us to go racing, is the subject of such hatred.
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Indeed a number of FIA staff have also been targeted with harassment and hate posts over the past few years.
It is totally unacceptable that our volunteers, officials and employees are subjected to this extreme abuse. It has no place in our sport. It has a devastating effect on our mental health and that of our loved ones.
I will always stand up for my staff and volunteers. And let me be clear – without these people there would be no racing. We have to ask ourselves, who would want to pursue becoming a top official in this environment? The reality is obvious – if this continues it will destroy our sport.
As the referee, and as the President you of course expect people to disagree with the decisions you make. But you should expect that those opinions and comments are respectful. This is increasingly rare.
Only through a collaborative approach will we achieve a measure of success in combatting this scourge on our sport.
We have already initiated that process through the following actions:
-We have entered into dialogue with social media platforms to play their part and we are beginning work with governments and fellow sports governing bodies to bring them together to make strong commitments for joint action.
-We are commissioning research via the FIA University into digital hate and toxic commentary specific to sport. This will provide a platform for knowledge sharing, education and prevention.
-We have partnered with Arwen.ai to utilise their AI software to detect and eradicate abusive content on our own channels.
In the coming months we will be launching a concerted campaign by leveraging the power and reach of our entire federation which numbers 244 motoring and sporting organisations in 146 countries on 5 continents.
This campaign will build on the collaborative work by the FIA and Formula 1 through the Drive It Out initiative.
I will be talking more about this at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix later this month.
Passions run high in sport, but online harassment, abuse and hate speech must not be tolerated.
Everyone in our sport, from the media, teams, drivers and fans has a role to play. We cannot ignore this. I urge the entire motorsport ecosystem to take a stand.
We must call it out. It has to stop.
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