Basketball Australia hopes a new partnership will draw a line in the sand that online abuse of NBL and WNBL players will not be tolerated.
On Wednesday, the sport's governing body in Australia announced a partnership with Social Protect, an online platform that helps filter abusive comments from players' social media feeds.
Social Protect can track and automatically remove more than two million abusive words and phrases in more than 100 languages from Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Discord.
The program is now available to NBL, WNBL and NBL1 players, coaches and referees, who are able to enter custom words or phrases that can also be filtered out by Social Protect.
The platform provides educational resources as well, and has been partnering with Rugby Australia since earlier this year too.
BA's partnership comes a year after Tasmania JackJumpers coach Scott Roth made an impassioned plea for the NBL to help protect players from "ugly" online abuse.
Roth revealed last November that online trolls had wished a miscarriage upon the pregnant partner of a player during a form slump for the team.
"We're just here to entertain, play as hard as we can. This is not life or death. It's disgusting," he said at the time.
On Wednesday, Basketball Australia appeared to have heeded Roth's call.
"Basketball Australia's Safe Sport Framework sets a clear standard in that abuse, harm and neglect have no place in our sport - on the court or online," said chief executive Matt Scriven.
"This partnership with Social Protect reinforces that standard by giving athletes at all levels real protection against online abuse and a safer environment to participate, connect and grow."
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