As women’s sports have grown in interest, so too has online harassment for women athletes — especially its most visible players. According to The Net, a mental health support network for women in sports, 87% of women in sports have experienced online harm in the past year.
A new tool from The Net, which was created by agency BarkleyOKRP in partnership with WNBA league the Chicago Sky, uses AI to block players from seeing harmful content while scrolling their social media feeds.
The tool, which is currently in beta and only available to Chicago Sky players, uses AI to detect harmful comments on players’ X (formerly Twitter) feeds and then blurs them out. Each blurred post is topped with a banner that reads “negativity blocked,” which ties back to the campaign tagline: Block the negativity, post up positivity.
The Chicago Sky’s own Angel Reese, who fronts a campaign video for …