How DailyFootball works

Our sources

We follow the public feeds (RSS) of sports media from several countries, together with “radars” such as Google News or Reddit, which only serve to spot the subjects people are talking about.

• For every article we spot, we keep its headline, its link and its publication date.
• A short extract (300 characters at most) is kept only if the outlet objects neither to AI bots nor to text and data mining. When an outlet does object, we use its headlines alone.
• We never copy the full text of an article, nor its pictures.

Every published article ends with a Sources block linking back to the original articles. A subject is only covered when at least two different outlets report it.

The part played by AI

When several outlets report the same subject, an artificial intelligence model writes a brief or an article. All it is given is a file: the headlines of the sources, and extracts from the sources that allow them. Every morning, a briefing sums up what matters.

Its instructions are strict:

• write only facts found in the file, and attribute every piece of information to its outlet (“according to…”);
• keep rumours conditional;
• never invent a quotation, and never copy a sentence;
• drop the subject when the file is not enough.

Every article carries the line “This article was written with the help of AI, from the sources quoted”.

The checks made before publication

Before it is published, every text goes through automatic checks:

• every figure and every proper noun must appear in the sources;
• no run of ten words or more may be lifted from a source, outside a short quotation in quotation marks;
• at least two different outlets must be quoted, and the information attributed;
• stock phrases and clickbait headlines are turned down.

A text that fails is rewritten once, then dropped if it fails again. Sensitive subjects (deaths, violence, court cases, racism, serious injuries, doping, mental health, and the like) follow stricter rules: at least three separate outlets including a reference one, every person named reported by two outlets, the presumption of innocence stated, a sober tone. If a single rule is not met, the site stays silent: nothing is published.

Corrections and updates

When a subject moves on, we update the existing article rather than publish a new one. The date of the update is then shown under the headline, and the earlier version is kept.

Spotted a mistake? Write to us at [email protected], or use the “Report an error” link at the foot of every article.

Takedown requests

An outlet, or a person concerned, may ask for an article or a quotation to be taken down. Write to [email protected] giving the address of the page: the request is looked at, and the article can be unpublished.

An outlet may also stop being followed at any time: it only has to block our bot in its robots.txt file.

Our bot

Our collecting bot is called DailyFootballBot. It reads public feeds only, obeys the rules set in robots.txt files and limits how often it calls. Everything is set out on the DailyFootballBot page.