More than 5,500 explicitly racist posts targeting England players appeared on X during the 2026 World Cup, and the platform’s recommender system pushed that abuse into millions of feeds, according to new research by Hope Not Hate. The group analysed more than 300,000 posts on the site, formerly Twitter, and said the platform’s design rewarded anger, outrage and hate because those reactions keep users scrolling and help drive advertising revenue.
The Platform’s Profit Logic
Patrik Hermansson, senior researcher at Hope Not Hate, put the arrangement in plain terms. "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. They show up in the recommendation feed - they are not obscure corners of this website, they are front and centre. That's a choice it doesn't have to make and yet it does."
That is the machinery at work. Not an accident, not a glitch, not some unfortunate side effect of a neutral system. The platform’s own recommendation feed, built to maximise interaction and profit, helped turn racist abuse into a mass product. Hope Not Hate said posts that provoke strong reactions keep people on the platform longer, which in turn can increase advertising revenue. The abuse was not hidden away. It was surfaced.
Jude Bellingham was the player most targeted by racist abuse, while Bukayo Saka and Kobbie Mainoo experienced the highest proportion of racism compared with the total number of posts mentioning them. Djed Spence, who has converted to Islam in recent years, was also subjected to a distinct stream of anti-Muslim abuse, according to the report. The targets were footballers. The engine was a platform built to monetise attention.
The State’s Favourite Fix: After the Damage
Hope Not Hate said current attempts to tackle online abuse focus too heavily on what happens after a racist post has already been seen. Players can block users, report messages and platforms can suspend accounts, but Hermansson said those measures do not address how abusive content is amplified in the first place. "X doesn't take racism seriously enough," he said. "We've seen it for a number of years now. There is no change or improvement."
The group said social media companies already have the tools to alter how their algorithms recommend content, especially during periods when abuse is surging. Hermansson said, "It's actually a relatively small number of accounts and originating tweets that then get tons of replies," adding, "I think it's entirely feasible to stop this, or a vast amount of it."
Hope Not Hate said one option would be to downrank posts attracting large volumes of abuse so they are recommended to fewer people. Before the new Premier League season, the group called on UK's media regulator Ofcom to use its existing powers under the Online Safety Act more effectively and address predictable spikes in hate. They want Ofcom to outlaw the algorithms fulling abuse and also to designate major sporting events as "high risk." That would require platforms to deploy strict safety-by-design rules, remove abuse proactively and downrank rapidly escalating viral hate through algorithmic adjustments.
Ofcom said in a statement to BBC Sport: "We're pushing tech firms hard to make their services safer, and we'll be holding them to account if they don't." It also cited a new partnership with police and footballing bodies before the World Cup to tackle online abuse. The familiar ritual followed: regulator, police, football authorities, all promising safety after the fact while the platform architecture that amplified the abuse remained in place.
Who Gets Protected, Who Gets Exposed
The FA responded with a statement saying: "all players have the right to play without being exposed to hateful, discriminatory and distressing content online." It added: "We want service providers to take all of the necessary steps to create a safer life online for everyone." Fine words. The report’s central point sits underneath them: the harm was already being distributed at scale by a system designed to reward it.
Hope Not Hate collected posts mentioning England players by name or X handle, plus replies to player and team accounts. It also collected posts mentioning Team England and other related keywords, filtered out irrelevant posts, and then used artificial intelligence to sort the data based on human-labelled examples. Different forms of racism were identified, along with "far-right narratives" and hateful slogans. Samples were checked manually for accuracy, and posts were counted as abuse on a yes-or-no basis rather than graded by severity.
That method matters because it shows the scale without any need for drama. More than 300,000 posts reviewed. More than 5,500 explicitly racist posts found. Millions of feeds reached. A platform that says it connects people, while its algorithm helps push racist abuse to the front of the queue. The footballers were the targets. The business model did the rest.