Ronaldo’s Iranian Fans Troll Payet on Instagram

French footballer Dimitri Payet has been subjected to a barrage of insults and abuse from Christiano Ronaldo’s Iranian fans following the finals of the European championship in France. The abuse, posted on Instagram, followed a controversial tackle by Payet, which led to the star Portuguese and Real Madrid player having to duck out of the final with France on Sunday night.

Despite the Portugal captain’s attempts to carry on after the robust tackle, he was forced to leave the field in tears after 25 minutes. Shortly after, Ronaldo’s Iranian fans began trolling midfielder Dimitri Payet on Instagram.

The number of abusive comments grew after Iranian football reporter Adel Ferdosipour expressed shock over the behavior on Iranian television. “I see our compatriots are on Payet's Instagram page! What do they think they’re doing?”

Ferdosipour said he raised the issue of trolling as a word of warning, and intended to put a stop to the abuse — but instead, some people took it as a sign to join in on the attacks.  

At last glance, there were about 363,000 comments about the match on Instagram — and most of them were by Iranians. But angry Ronaldo fans didn’t just comment on Payet’s most recent photos; they also posted abusive comments on his previous posts. Although many posted in Persian, some also vented their frustration in English too. Some fans even went further, posting vulgar, insulting remarks about Payet's mother and sister, often in very bad English. This tactic is nothing new for trolls, who use it to provoke a reaction from their targets.

In addition to the abusive comments, some Iranians clearly thought the whole affair was funny. “I wish you hadn’t posted new photos,” one wrote on Payet’s feed. “Now we’ve reached a new record for the number of comments!” Others apologized for their fellow countrymen’s behavior, while some people took advantage of the situation and took the opportunity to promote themselves, urging people on Payet’s feed to follow them on Instagram.

Attacks on Lionel Messi, Brazilian model Fernanda Lima...and NASA

It’s not first time that Iranians have attacked international sports celebrities on social media. Iranian trolls have also targeted Argentinian footballer and Barcelona striker Lionel Messi at least three times. The first instance, in late 2013, followed the draw for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which put Iran in the same group as Argentina, Nigeria and Bosnia. Iranians posted thousands of insults on Messi’s Facebook page, with the UK newspaper the Mirror reporting abuse or insults from “30,000 Iran supporters.”

Then, a slew of Persian-language taunts appeared on Messi’s page after he scored a goal in the last minute of the Iran-Argentina match on June 21, 2014. And Iranians didn’t forget Messi. When he posted a photo of himself with fellow national team member Ángel Di María when the Paris Saint-Germain player joined Instagram in April 2016, many Iranians thought the photo was a reference to the Iran-Argentina match — and left abusive comments underneath the photo.

Trolls also targeted Brazilian model and actress Fernanda Lima back in 2013, after she presented the draw for the group stage on television. Despite the fact that Iran has huge numbers of football fans, Iranian television didn’t cover the live announcement of the draw because of the way Lima was dressed — in clear contravention of Islamic values according to Iranian officials and censors. Some Iranian urged her to “cover up,” others expressed shock at the way she was dressed — but many people went further, and posted offensive and abusive comments. Even though Lima couldn’t read Persian, the message that her dress was in some way objectionable came through loud and clear. Soon after the controversy, Lima said she planned to cover up for a FIFA gala in January 2014.

Iranians on Instagram did set up another group — “Iranians Apologize to Fernanda Lima & Leo Messi" — which close to 20,000 people joined.

It’s not just football that gets Iranians riled up. They followed nuclear talks between Iran and world leaders, and many went on to social media to voice their resentment, impatience or anger. When former French foreign minister Laurent Fabius took a tough line with Iran in 2015, many targeted his Facebook page, posting insults and negative comments.

And, back in 2012, Iranians lashed out at NASA on its Facebook page. The backlash followed a rumor circulated on social networks used by Iranians that NASA had said the world would end on December 21, 2012. This led to some Iranians leaving offensive comments on NASA’s Facebook page.

Iranian blogger and social media expert Amin Sabeti told IranWire that trolling is an increasing global problem, with people from many countries lashing out at celebrities in particular. “Iranians are not the only ones,” he said, citing attacks on Zelda Williams, the daughter of comedian Robin Williams, who committed suicide in 2014. She closed her Twitter account soon after the abuse. More recently, British tennis player Heather Watson accused trolls of “not being brave enough” to confront her personally after her loss to Annika Beck at Wimbledon. Most of the people who posted abusive comments on Twitter were thought to have been gamblers who bet on the Beck-Watson match and lost.

But Sabeti did say that Iranians might be more likely to be abusive online than people from other countries. “The Iranian government has done nothing to educate people about how social media works. Social media networks are really new in Iran and many people are not aware of how to manage them”. He said many Iranians believed social media sites afforded them a level of freedom they hadn’t experienced before, and that they would remain anonymous without being judged in the public eye. “They feel they are safe and no one will know who they really are,” he said. A large number of Iranians with social media profiles use pseudonyms and fake information to set up their accounts — for Iranians, it’s become a habit to protect themselves from government interference, or even prosecution or jail. It’s perhaps odd, then, that so many would take to intimidating others.

Of course, social media sites including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have rigorous policies on abusive comments, vowing to delete the accounts of people who post them. But when the volume of an attack is huge, in practice, taking down accounts and deleting comments becomes problematic and time-consuming. “There is not any technical way to fix the problem,” says Sabeti. “The best way is to teach people — which will take time.”