A Hackathon-Winning Project Will Identify False Profiles and Trolls in Social Networks

The TROLLESS team, who won the second “The Fifth Power” Media Hackathon organized by the Independent Journalism Center and Deutsche Welle Akdemie in July 2016, officially launched on Monday, October 3, a project with the same name, aiming to identify sources of manipulation in the new media and isolate them.

According to the authors of the app, the TROLLESS project appeared out of the need to protect the online space, where a growing number of false profiles has been appearing lately and where trolls have been increasingly active.

“The purpose of our app is to fight manipulation and disinformation via social networks. At the same time, it will identify false profiles and trolls’ profiles and report them to Facebook. Suspect profiles will be introduced into a database and analyzed according to an algorithm in order to establish whether they belong to trolls,” one of the team members told Media Azi.

At the second “The Fifth Power” Media Hackathon, three teams were designated winners. They received prizes of EUR 2,000 each to implement their projects.

The second “The Fifth Power” Media Hackathon has been realized as part of the “Strengthening Freedom of Expression in Moldova” project implemented by the Independent Journalism Center with the support of Deutsche Welle Academie and funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany.