Estonia can learn from Slovakia’s experience

The reality compliance, neutrality and benevolence of the content of Social Media and generally all electronic communication channels is under increasing pressure. The editors of Propastop have noted the solutions developed by Slovakia and joint initiatives to improve the quality of material distributed in Social Media.

In a country with 5.43 million inhabitants, an umbrella platform projekthope.sk, was launched, which brings together nine different initiatives to improve the quality of electronic media and communications between people.

#SOMTU is a Facebook based closed group venture that actively contributes to improving the quality of Social Media communication and content. The group that currently has 6086 members can be joined by anyone, who wants to actively contribute and stand against individuals who promote hatred.

The principles of #SOMTU members are openness, respect and constructive discussion. This movement is the Slovakian version of #Jagärhär (#Iamhere), an initiative launched in Sweden.

Blbec.online is a Facebook page analytical tool started in Slovakia, which helps detect suspicious content, lies and trolls. With the help of the Blbec (translated, jerk) environment, you can analyze the most frequent postings, their area of distribution, the more active distributors as well as see postings that have been posted on the page but are now deleted.

The konspiratori.sk webpage analyzes and collects a variety of news and information pages and compiles them into a database. It contains the majority of addresses that distribute false information or biased material in the Slovakian information space.

The database is an effective assistant for online advertising companies in order to prevent the ad from getting into an inappropriate environment and their advertising monies getting into the hands of fake news distributors. The database is complied by a group of renowned experts, from which you can find political scientists, teachers, journalists, historians etc.

 Checkbot is a Facebook based communication robot that assists in finding backgrounds for news items. Checkbot does not teach or direct but asks what kind of news did you last read and where did you read it. By giving it a link, it looks at the origins of the news and compares it to the conspirator.sk database. It explains the characteristics of the channel and calls for the same information to be found elsewhere.

All communication takes place in the form of a conversation and with good intentions. As of today, the assisting tool launched in July 2018 has analyzed tens of thousands of news items and has more than 7000 followers on its Facebook page.

Sebavedome Slovensko (Self-confident Slovakia) is an undertaking that focuses on finding and highlighting the positive features of Slovakia and bringing these out in Social Media. The activity is based on a Facebook group.

Demagog.sk is already familiar to Propastop readers. It analyzes the debates of politicians on television and evaluates its content, correctness and neutrality.

The database is updated once a week, and publicly evaluates Slovak politicians and displays their „scores“ historically. It shows the value of the statements of various politicians and how often facts are mistaken or demagoguery is used.

Slovak elfovia is a Slovakian environment that is based on the Lithuanian elf website. It started operating in the middle of last year and is currently gathering members who want to jointly contribute to the improvement of Slovakia.

Nenavistny skutok (disgusting act) is a movement that collects information on incidents and thereby actively reducing hate crimes in Slovakia. Through the site, it is possible to convey information about the hate crime experienced. A group of activists, including lawyers provide advice, support and recommendations for solutions to make all of society a safer place.

Mladi proti fašizmu, youth against fascism, is an initiative launched by the 15-year-old Slovak, Marek Mach. It is a movement against the spread of false and conspiracy theories spread by members of the Russian minded, Slovakian political party, Kotleba. For example, this political party has spread fake news about rape on a train in Slovakia and they have used the Holocaust in their own interests.

Marek Mach’s initiative is largely based on presenting the facts of Slovakian history, the background of fascism and its roots in current times.

As seen above, Slovakia has been active in organizing and keeping clean its information space through its own citizens’ initiatives.

This list includes a number of initiatives that could be successfully launched in Estonia to clean up our electronic information environment and to limit hate crimes and trolling here.