There are countless positives of social media until you get familiar with its dark side. Trolls, online bullying, and harassment are still some of the issues that have remained unavoidable. In light of such events, WNBA star Angel Reese finally stood up to take matters into her own hands and announced a groundbreaking anti-cyberbullying solution that may end this problem for good. The Chicago Sky forward’s latest project has even caught the eyes of Megan Rapinoe who gave a special ‘shoutout’ to Reese.

In the recently released third episode of ‘A Touch More,‘ the USWNT icon’s podcast co-hosted alongside Sue Bird, the couple took time to discuss the latest initiative taken by Reese. Rapinoe started by addressing the significant growth of bots on social media platforms and urged all the athletes to get on board to seek a solution, particularly women.

“When you go on the comments it’s gross in there and especially for women. No matter what kind of woman you are, how you present, or what you look like, you’re going to get hate for something. So I would really encourage everybody out there to try to either stay out of the comments or at least take it with a grain of salt,” advised the former OL Reign, now Seattle Reign, star.

Rapinoe, who herself remains a subject of online abuse even after hanging up her boots insisted on being able to relate to individuals who face similar situations. She urged the actual people who comment hateful things on the internet to “just take a beat” and realize that their actions may affect others who have genuine feelings and emotions. “You don’t have to be so hateful. This is a sport, relax a little bit.”

The 2x World Champion sympathized and patted the back of Reese, cheering up other women to speak out on this unaddressed issue. While condemning such behavior and demanding the need to be kinder to each other, the former US international concluded, “I love Angel for this. This is really cool using her really big platform to combat it. She’s dealt with so much. I mean the racism, the sexism, the homophobia; all of it in there for female athletes is crazy so this is really cool from Angel, shoutout Angel.”

Seems like Reese has the approval of Rapinoe on the initiative of the 22-year-old. Speaking of which, how exactly will the Chicago Sky star combat this grave issue?

Know more about Angel Reese’s anti-cyberbullying endeavor that left Megan Rapinoe in awe

Angel Reese is leading this groundbreaking initiative which has been dubbed ‘Block the Negativity, Post Up Positivity.’ She has teamed up with The Net, a mental health network for women in sports, and the agency BarkleyOKRP to introduce an innovative AI tool. This application will automatically recognize and blur out harmful comments by replacing them with the message, “Negativity Blocked.”

This way, players will remain mentally and emotionally focused on their game, not getting distracted by any kind of hostile talk. Though the tool is currently in beta testing with the Chicago Sky players, a video on the team’s official YouTube channel features Reese confronting hate comments aimed at her.

The clip ends with an eyebrow-raising stat that 87% of female athletes have been the subject of online abuse in the past year. Unfortunately, Reese too is one of them, having faced racist and misogynistic comments, both during her college career at LSU and in her rookie season with the Chicago Sky. Regardless, it seems all of this will be ending very soon.