This article, like the FanGuard platform, is a work in progress. It’s been an interesting experience to say the least: in the aftermath of the EURO 2020 racism incidents, I wanted to put this system together as fast as possible in time for the 2021/22 season with built-in security, scalability, and integrations with common social platforms. And without spending months writing code and waiting for big-tech platforms to approve my developer account…

The “No Code” trend has caught on in the tech industry, and now I can definitely see why. Using AirTable for our data layer unlocks a wide range of automated workflows and integrations. The ability to edit a database like a spreadsheet is very useful, especially when handling free-form user data. Leveraging a Discord server for live messaging and Stacker for a hosted user interface saves us months of laborious full-stack engineering.

I will explain the workflows and components that make up FanGuard’s architecture. Though there is technically no code, there is a good amount of engineering.

Workflows

Data from each of the following platforms is automagically, thanks to Zapier, pushed its designated AirTable table:

• Twitter mention of @fanguardbot
• Discord message in #submit_report channel
• Reddit link submission in r/fanguard subreddit
• Typeform web link submission
• Facebook mention of @fanguard (manual, Facebook-Zapier bug)
• Instagram mention of @fanguardofficial (manual, not supported)

On Reddit and Discord, submitted links are up/down voted by our community members for an initial round of filtering. When a FanGuard verified moderator (“Trusted Fan”) identifies a valid bad post on our consolidated live dashboard, they update its database ‘Verified’ field to True. This automatically adds the link to the verified BadPost table, and broadcasts it across our “Level 2” notification channels:

• Sent to Discord #verified_report channel
• Posted on Reddit by @fanguard_admin to r/fanguard subreddit
• Send to opt-in users and role groups

Only “Trusted Fans” will be allowed write access to the database. AirTable and Stacker make it easy to configure which specific fields a given role is allowed to update. All this with no code!

Similarly, any record in the “Bad Post” table marked as Urgent is sent to the “Broadcast” table and published on our “Level 1” notification channels. Only admin users have the ability to trigger this.

• (Re)Posted with comment on Twitter by @fanguardbot
• Pinned to top of r/fanguard subReddit (manual)
• Sent to Discord #urgent channel with @everyone mention
• Push Notification on mobile phone (v2)

Last but not least, records to BadPost create another record in BadAccount. Remember, these are very real humans behind the @usernames who need to be held accountable. We want to keep track of these troll accounts to quickly snuff them out and follow up with any potential investigations.

Reports via Direct Messages (DMs) are handled manually by our moderators and admins, and can be used for more personal incidents.

Architecture

This is my working architecture diagram. For the grey box in the bottom-right, we need more developers to code a mobile app & notifications system.

The “verb-based architecture” diagram may be helpful for context:

Our public roadmap/feature request board is hosted on Trello, please vote or contribute if you have any ideas!

Cost Analysis

The below list contains all our hosted resources with their associated pricing plans. Note these are just projections: we cannot fully anticipate how people will respond to this initiative and what our user load will look like.

1. AirTable: https://airtable.com/pricing

• Expected cost: $20/month

2. Zapier: https://zapier.com/app/billing/plans

• Expected cost: $289/month (50k tasks)

3. Stacker: https://www.stackerhq.com/pricing

• Expected cost: $60/month

3. TypeForm: https://www.typeform.com/pricing/

• Expected cost: $83/month (up to 10k submissions)

4. WebFlow: https://webflow.com/pricing

• Expected cost: $20/month for CMS plan

5. Domains: fanguard.info, fanguard.app, respectfulfans.org

• $12/year per domain

6. Email: https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html

• Expected cost: $6/user/month
• Roughly $24/month

Expected total cost per month: $499

Not bad, right!? Developers make more than this in a (couple) day(s). And until we get more donations, I am funding this with some of my VanGuard shares :) But imagine the cost of writing and maintaining all this code… Instead, we can launch in time for the 2021/22 season, rapidly expand our team, and enjoy all the other benefits of using hosted services on the cloud.

-Written by Aditya Nirvaan Ranganathan, Founder

Since the pandemic started, all fans have been forced to watch (and more generally, live) from the confines of their tv rooms for over a year. During this time, hateful content on social media has drastically increased in frequency and severity. None of the clubs, host platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), or governing bodies (UEFA, FIFA) have had a meaningful impact on the situation thus far.

In football, reports of abuse in the professional game have risen 42%. It’s a statistic I’m all too familiar with, having been on the receiving end of such abuse throughout my career -Wilfried Zaha, footballer. From GQ editorial published 7 December 2020

UEFA EURO 2020, Summer 2021

Let’s work backwards from the England vs. Italy EURO 2020 Finals on July 11, 2021. Italy missed their second penalty, momentarily giving England the upper hand. Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, who were belatedly subbed on for England on in the 119th minute, proceeded to miss their respective penalties. Then Jorginho had the chance to seal it for Italy at 3–2, but Pickford came up with a brilliant save to keep England in the tie. There was a brief moment of hope…could it still come home? Had Jorginho converted his penalty, the match would have ended on a more triumphant note. But as Bane says in Dark Knight Rises: “There can be no true despair without hope”.

Instead, we concluded the tournament with a heartbreaking miss from 19 year old Bukayo Saka, who was born in West London but is of Nigerian descent. Immediately after the match, a cursory search on Twitter and Instagram shows us some of the shocking abuse Saka, Rashford, and other players routinely face.

Most of these burner accounts have no name, face, gender, race, religion, or nationality, and it’s often hard to be sure who the human behind the account is. English fans are unfortunately getting the majority of the blame, but in reality after the penalty shootout many of them were shellshocked at home, in a pub, or at Wembley itself. They weren’t lurking on these profiles waiting to strike if their players faltered. Gareth Southgate and many fans are trying to point out that while some of the racist abuse did indeed originate from English fans, the bulk of it is from global internet trolls. We should make it an urgent priority to block, or at least automatically flag and report, comments that are just repeated monkey-related emojis with no contextualizing text. Under the hood, emojis are just standardized Unicode characters: I coded a rudimentary sample of such a flagging system here using vanilla Javascript and HTML.

It takes very little effort to be a troll and write these hateful words, symbols, and images. But imagine being born in England, dedicating your entire youth to becoming a footballer and all the sacrifices that entails, spending years training and working your way up the ladder, then finally making it to your national team’s starting 11 in the EURO finals. When given a chance to take a penalty and secure your country’s victory, you have a momentary lapse in focus (or just plain bad luck) and hit the goalkeeper, the woodwork, or the stands.

Marcus Rashford MBE on Twitter: "At least 70 racial slurs on my social accounts counted so far. For those working to make me feel any worse than I already do, good luck trying 👍🏾 / Twitter"

At least 70 racial slurs on my social accounts counted so far. For those working to make me feel any worse than I already do, good luck trying 👍🏾

It never feels good, but it happens! Rashford, Sancho, and Saka are already upset enough with themselves. There’s no reason they need to be subject to any further criticism, especially from fans who have contributed nothing but ad revenue. There is a lot of positive momentum across social media to “protect” Rashford, Sancho, and Saka, which I want to harness and optimize. I will cover that after reviewing notable past incidents and responses.

Here is the Tweet that compelled me to start FanGuard, and 3,247 supporters to donate £36,176 to “Show this little German supporter that not everyone in the UK is horrible”. This was part of a JustGiving cause created by Joel Hughes, who was so badly “cancelled” he had to deal with hateful comments and lock his Twitter account.

Stan Collymore on Twitter: "No words necessary. pic.twitter.com/8qF4BtJelV / Twitter"

No words necessary. pic.twitter.com/8qF4BtJelV

Why did so many people support this campaign? England vs. Germany opened with the English fans loudly boo-ing the German national anthem. Already off to a racially offensive start, which Gareth Southgate pleaded with the fans to prevent in subsequent matches. After Germany lost and the “fan-cam” showed this young German girl crying, I read that the stadium (and pubs around Britain) erupted in cheers and racist jeers. There was also plenty of other in-person abuse at the tournament such as in Budapest for Hungary-France where fans aimed monkey-chants at N’Golo Kante, the most modest and respectful football player out there. So perhaps Joel Hughes’ supporters felt compelled to compensate for other fans’ despicable behavior in the form of a GoFundMe donation.

And as we saw, the online follow up against this young German supporter and Joel Hughes himself was even more disgraceful. ChelsCal, one of the main offenders, didn’t even spell Anne Frank correctly.

“Hateful Fans”

Online racism incidents surrounding EURO 2020 highlight the type of people we are dealing with: somewhat uneducated, potentially intoxicated, and/or racially motivated. Despite my best efforts, I probably would not be able to change their values or belief system sitting here typing on my laptop. What I can do, however, is make sure their foul content does not reach the players. And as Wilfried Zaha writes in his editorial, “People need to be accountable” — social media allows for anonymity, but there are ways to track and flag repeated offenders if we gather evidence. So remember to take screenshots: we want to remove the content as quickly as possible, but follow up with the offending accounts.

On the other hand, a lot of abuse is not visible to the public eye. On Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, any user can send a “Direct Message”(DM) to any other user, which opens the floodgates for athletes and other celebrities. These platforms group such messages into an “unknown sender” bucket separate from the users main inbox, but the messages very much exist. See one notable incident where Wilfried Zaha received these messages in his Instagram inbox.

Wilfried Zaha on Twitter: "Woke up to this today. pic.twitter.com/Zal0F96htJ / Twitter"

Woke up to this today. pic.twitter.com/Zal0F96htJ

After further investigation it was found that the human behind this account was a 12 year old boy from Soilhull, a small town in central England. This is so disappointing to hear…a young child already filled with toxic ideas that he feels with such intensity he actually wrote and sent these messages. Racism is a complex societal issue that needs to be addressed at a grassroots level. How can we help steer these young fans back on the right track? We are open to all suggestions.

Unfortunately, these incidents happens more often than we’d like to admit:

• Martial after 1–1 draw with West Bromwich Albion in Premier League
• Son after 3–1 defeat at Man Utd in Premier League
• Sterling after English Football 4-day social media boycott
• Walker after Champions League defeat
• Alexander-Arnold after Champions League defeat

Racist content makes headlines most frequently, but abuse comes in many shapes and forms. After Alvaro Morata’s decisive penalty miss in the EURO 2020 Italy vs. Spain Semi-final penalty shootout, his wife Alice Campello received awful messages in her inbox:

“Don’t you dare publish photos of Morata’s goal or I will go to your house and burn you live on Instagram”; while another user said “Both you (Morata and Campello) and your children will die of a heart attack”.

Clearly the abuse spreads to those dear to the footballers. These messages are explicitly abuseful, hateful, and violent, which should be enough grounds to flag the user. And unfortunately, death threats are not uncommon in football even to national heroes such as Andrea Pirlo and his family. Most recently, American midfielder Pulisic received death threats from animal rights activists in response to an Instagram video .

These are just few of the many reported incidents from the past year — the list goes on. In person issues are less frequent since by sheer numbers social media has so many more participants. There are still some appalling incidents I know of including Aubamayeng having a banana thrown at him and Rudiger being targeted by a monkey chant.

Organizational Responses & Legal Procedures

What are clubs, leagues, governing bodies, and legal entities doing about this? Are there tools out there to help?

Let’s start with the social media platforms themselves, who have come under heat for failing to curb racism and abuse on their platforms. Many fans showed the big-tech response to their “Report” of a blatantly hateful comment:

Though they can’t get it right all the time, they should not be this sloppy. I believe that with help from a moderate number of FanGuard members flagging content in numbers, we can cause spikes on these platforms and show them where the dirt is. On a related note, I really want to learn about these content moderation systems from someone inside the company, and would happily welcome any anonymous recruits…

Social media companies host the content, but much of peoples emotion revolve around the drama of domestic leagues. The Premier League launched its “No Room for Racism” in early 2021, and while the initiative is commendable as Zaha says, the league defers to the host social media platforms for content control. As I understand it, the league does not take any further action to remove the content or investigate the user. The website additionally lists hotline phone numbers and email addresses for each club.

The other option they provide to report in-person abuse is a web form on project Kick it Out, which provides several valuable initiatives I hope to collaborate with in the future. The UEFA and FIFA reporting system Farenet similarly only support reporting in-person incidents, and the UI is quite outdated, so I doubt it is of much practical use here either.

But whilst gestures such as the No Room For Racism badge on every Premier League kit feel like a step in the right direction, at the end of the day we need action, and we need meaningful change: not just a change in people’s behaviour, but a change from those in positions of power. -Wilfried Zaha editorial

More recently, clubs have been looking into a software called Respondology that will “Hide toxic, product damaging, and spam comments in your social media”. But these slogans reveal its shortcomings: “Improve Sales. Protect Brand Equity. Remove Illegal Spam.” Respondology and its ilk are paid services whose contract is to protect the club’s reputation on social media, not the players mental wellbeing. Even if clubs finally decide to purchase this software, as reported by The Athletic, it would only go so far to address the problems evident in EURO 2020. After we establish a proof-of-concept, I want to launch a Hackathon towards developing open-source content detection tools, and a free app that automatically deletes bad content from a users profile.

On a personal level, a few major personalities have taken a stand against online abuse, most notably Jordan Henderson with CyberSmile.org. Henderson piloted the People Not Profiles Anti-Cyberbullying Campaign that shared numerous posts submitted by the general public as well as from Henderson and a number of other high-profile athletes across a range of demographics. In a supporting interview when asked “Do you think football fans can do anything to help the situation?”, Henderson replied:

I don’t think only football fans should be singled out — it’s a wider societal issue which needs lots of different parties pulling together to make meaningful change. I think one thing everyone can do is make sure that all abuse is getting reported — if we keep calling it out every time we see it then it will keep the pressure on those responsible to make changes to improve the situation.

I couldn’t agree more: first and foremost we need to make sure that all abuse is reported and documented. The Liverpool captains effort are inspirational, especially compared to the hypocritical comments from Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel, who labeled kneeling as “gesture politics” and seems to have no qualms about England fans boo-ing this show of support from the players.

Looking specifically at the EURO 2020 finals incident, the English FA issued the following 2-part statement:

FA Spokesperson on Twitter: "pic.twitter.com/op3aQYoixi / Twitter"

pic.twitter.com/op3aQYoixi

Can we at FanGuard collectively help out to “gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse”? Ultimately the social media companies need to remove content and block users, but we can help them flag the relevant posts and accounts.

Nuances

“Racism” is not a global consensus. There are subtle differences between what constitutes racism or linguistics in across cultures.

1. Cavani “Gracias negrito” incident

Edinson Cavani confidently posted this on his public Instagram story in response to one of his friends, who apparently is called that in Uruguay. Many people including the English F.A. claimed that this language is blatantly offensive, while Cavani and Uruguayan F.A. claim the word is commonplace and that the English F.A. investigation is itself racist.

2. UEFA Romanian referees “negru” incident

Referees claim they were referring to one of the coaches as “the black one”, which in their language translates to “negru”. However, what need is there to refer to the coach as ‘the black one’, this would not be applicable to the other white coaches.

3. Allowed vs. Offensive use of the N-word

Most of us know the explicit rules about what the word means with and without the hard ‘r’, and the unspoken rules about who can and can’t say the -a version in real life. Two different people could use this word with the same intention resulting in two completely different social outcomes. Context is key, and we must be able to distinguish between “allowed” versus “offensive” usage.

This extends more generally to content moderation: at what point does a joke cross the line? Ultimately, it is not the giant, abstract entity of “Instagram” who rejected users reports, it’s an employee somewhere who has to sift through this sort of content all day every day. So until there is some genius anti-racism algorithm with the precision of goal-line technology, we will need to crowd-source this decision and help this moderator more clearly see what content a lot of people agree crosses the line.

Identifying & Punishing Offenders

Social media provides the ability for individuals to anonymously say whatever they want with no repercussions. This is not how the world works — you have a right to free speech, but cannot scream “bomb” on an airplane. Finding the individuals behind these fake accounts (their legal name, IP address, device ID, any identifying information) is a difficult task. Even if their account is reported and deleted, they could still create another.

The social media platforms themselves are trying to combat these fake “troll” accounts against the spread of disinformation, but it is impossible to know the users intent. Many claim that the US Election in 2016 was derailed by such burner accounts, so this too is a larger societal issue we must tackle together. One core feature of FanGuard is to save screenshots and other evidence of such troll accounts so that if investigations are conducted (as the English F.A. suggests!) we have publicly-accessible, digitally-searchable supporting evidence ready.

Some people do use their personal accounts for these type of insults. I have seen one public apology from an offending account who took accountability for their actions. This is definitely a positive step, and I encourage this fan to reach out and further contribute to the cause!

“Respectful Fans”

Racism in sports is a complex multifaceted issue that must be combated from many sides. Online abuse has spread along with COVID and we need to work together to find a cure. The first step is for all us Respectful Fans to rally behind our players, help clean up the digital community, and plan how we can collectively sustain the battle against racism and abuse.

If you haven’t already, please check out our website and register to be a part of FanGuard! And as always, I would be delighted to hear any feedback or suggestions.

-Written by Aditya Nirvaan Ranganathan, Founder

email: contact@fanguard.info