FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem said he held talks with Twitter magnate Elon Musk at the Miami Grand Prix to combat the rise in online abusive behavior towards F1 figures.
The South African-born businessman was a guest at this weekend’s race in Miami, which was won by Max Verstappen with ease.
F1 has been trying to root out bad behavior online for the past year and has launched a campaign in 2022 aimed at tackling social media issues.
Now, Ben Sulayem has gone straight to the man who owns Twitter to try and find more solutions.
Talks seemed to be going well, as Ben Sulayem tweeted, “Great to meet @elonmusk at the Miami GP and discuss our joint efforts to tackle online abuse.”
Elon Musk is in the house. 🐶 pic.twitter.com/DBqzK4H3JR
— GPFans Global (@GPFansGlobal) May 6, 2023
Hamilton and Verstappen are among the social media critics
Online abuse is nothing new and to try and stop negative messaging on their platforms, F1 have partnered with Arwen.ai to try and stop harmful content.
The system analyzes messages using artificial intelligence, and in December last year it was revealed that 2,400 messages that were described as “severely toxic” were blocked from appearing on social media.
It is often aimed at key figures within the port and they begin to speak out on the issue.
Lewis Hamilton believes people should “probably get off social media” while Verstappen said some of the abuse he’s receiving is “disgusting”.
“Putting me down like that right away is frankly ridiculous because they don’t know how I work in a team and what the team values about me,” he said last year. “Well everything I’ve read is pretty disgusting.”
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