The Chicago Sky are partnering with a expertise firm that mentioned it helped the FBI monitor an alleged stalker of Caitlin Clark to additional fight on-line harassment of gamers and coaches, the group introduced Tuesday.
The Sky mentioned they may grow to be the primary WNBA group to accomplice with Moonshot, a agency based by nationwide safety professionals that goals to finish on-line abuse and violence. It would use its expertise to determine and take away regarding content material, assess credible dangers and take motion to mitigate hurt, in accordance with a launch saying the deal.
Moonshot CEO Vidhya Ramalingam advised ESPN that the corporate flagged threatening posts directed towards Clark, the Indiana Fever celebrity, which finally led to the January arrest of a 55-year-old man in Indianapolis. He was charged with stalking Clark.
“Our programs flagged some abhorrent habits coming from a person who was fixated on Caitlin Clark,” Ramalingam mentioned. “He was going forwards and backwards between like romantically obsessive posts and delusional posts, posts that had been threatening violence.”
The Clark stalking case got here one month after a 40-year-old man pleaded responsible to stalking Paige Bueckers whereas she performed for UConn.
Moonshot says 92% of girls in public life expertise abuse on-line, and 31% of this harassment is sexual in nature.
“Hate and harassment don’t have any place in sports activities,” Nadia Rawlinson, co-owner and working chairman of the Sky, mentioned within the launch. “Our partnership with Moonshot is about proactively tackling on-line hate, harassment, and abuse throughout social media and on the darkish net, so our gamers and coaches can deal with the sport of basketball and delighting our followers around the globe.”
Rawlinson added that feminine athletes, particularly ladies of shade and members of the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood, face disproportionate quantities of on-line harassment and threats of violence.
“Sadly, these incidents are growing commensurately with the expansion in ladies’s sports activities, sports activities betting, and use of synthetic intelligence,” Rawlinson mentioned.