Friday, March 10, 2023

If you are a responsible internet user or activist interested in countering hate speech, violent extremism or material harmful to minors online, apply to join the Albanian community of Trusted Flaggers of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube. The deadline for submitting applications is March 31, 2023

The program
This program is provided by the Academy of Political Studies (ASP) in cooperation with the National Authority for Electronic Certification and Electronic Security (AKCESK) with the support of the Embassy of the United States of America in Tirana, under the project "Trusted Flaggers for a safer Cyber Ecosystem from violent extremism".
About 20 participants of the Academy will increase their knowledge by participating in a cycle of four trainings from the best national and foreign experts. They will become part of the competition of monitoring illegal content in a period of 4 months (April - July 2023), on social networks and Youtube, enabling a prioritized reporting from international platforms.
The flagger with most reports will be awarded a full certification scholarship in Data Science, coding or cybersecurity profile of Academy Coding Dojo inc. The scholarship will be awarded in cooperation with the exclusive partner in Albania of Coding Dojo, the company "Betaplan".
AKCESK and other state institutions will also be invited to offer internships or other forms of training and cooperation with the network of Trusted Whistleblowers, guaranteeing further training and professional cooperation of the best participants. Establishing reliable cooperation with international social networking platforms will provide the opportunity to continue the priority communication with the Albanian network of Whistleblowers.
Interested persons are welcome to send a letter of motivation and a personal CV to the ASP email address: info@asp.al. The deadline for submitting applications is March 31, 2023, 4:00 p.m.

Trusted Flagger profile
Providers of online platforms (social networks, websites, chat and blogs), have built filters and technological programs to identify illegal content circulating in the online space. However, artificial intelligence has limitations and needs to have human help to analyze the most sophisticated messages. This gap is filled by Trusted Flaggers.
They are internet users who have a higher level of knowledge to raise the "red flag" of reporting illegal material. They can be individuals who demonstrate credibility, registered entities or even profiled experts in relevant reporting areas.

What content can be reported
According to the Albanian legal framework, four main categories of illegal online content are defined:
• Materials of sexual abuse of children;
• Hate speech, racism and xenophobia;
• Content of violent extremism and radicalism;
• Content that violates Intellectual Property Rights   Current experience and best international policy orientations encourage reporting by individuals and organizations with experience in programs against extremism or child trafficking and abuse, while intellectual rights cases require more dedicated expertise from official associations or licensed companies in this sector.

How priority reporting works
International platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik-Tok or Youtube are obliged by international legislation to provide an opportunity to report for each user. The time to analyze the reports made, the ambiguity, the language problem or even the high number of them, causes delays or the impossibility to block the reported materials in time.
To this end, red flags raised by trusted whistleblowers are prioritized through dedicated communication with online service providers. This is one of the advantages of whistleblowers, but at the same time also a responsibility to be reliable and provide as much clear information as possible about the detected violations.