After the 23 June World Cup game between Sweden and Germany, the Swedish footballer Jimmy Durmaz was exposed to an avalanche of race hate on social media.
Responding to this abuse and to make a clear values based statement against this form of abusive behaviour, Swedish insurance agency Länsförsäkringar launched its ‘Nasty Filter’ app: a utility which changes words of hatred into messages of love using autocorrect.
By scanning the abusive comments Durmaz received on his Instagram feed, the agency made note of the type and volume of hate and abuse he was being subjected to and filtered them through the Nasty Filter.
This saw hateful terms (eg terrorist pig, bearded animal, traitor, scum, and inbred) detected by the app and filtered out and replaced by the branded autocorrect filter.
To promote the app, the service it provides and the message it sends, a video was created to portray how hateful comments can be turned into messages of pure love.
Turn hate into love – The Nasty Filter from Stendahls on Vimeo.
The app, which was devised by advertising agency Stendahls, is now available to download from the App Store and Google Play.
Comment:
This World Cup initiative follows Länsförsäkringar’s wider project to improve young people’s mental health online.
It dovetails with and builds on the brand’s previous FulFiltret work
Länsförsäkringar – Nasty Filter from Stendahls on Vimeo.
and its 2018 #ImPerfect initiative earlier in 2018 – both of which aimed to reduce pressure around perfection in social media.
Links:
https://www.lansforsakringar.se
https://twitter.com/forsakringar
https://www.facebook.com/lansforsakringarstockholm/
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/länsförsäkringar
Stendahls
