Alex Blaga from Trollwall about using AI to combat toxic content and misinformation on social media
Alex Blaga works at Trollwall AI, a platform designed to moderate toxic comments on social media. In this episode, Alex explains how harmful content is often used to spread narratives through repetition alone. The conversation also touches on the need for user identification on social media and the balance between freedom of speech and accountability.
If you enjoy our podcast, please consider making a donation. It really helps us to sustain the podcast.
Top Keywords
- democracy 0.008
- political 0.008
- social 0.007
- comments 0.006
- europe 0.006
- narratives 0.006
- toxic 0.006
- tiktok 0.005
- european 0.005
- media 0.005
- social media 0.005
- attacks 0.005
Transcript
Welcome on another episode of Democracy Innovator podcast, and our guest of today is Alex Blaga. And, thank you for your time, Alex.
Thank you, Alessandro. It's a pleasure.
And, you're working on, TrollWall AI. Right? Yes. And, would you like to tell us about something about this project?
Yes. We're we're getting into it right away. I see. Yes. So the the project that I'm working on at the moment is called, Troll AI. As the name calls it, it's an artificial intelligence, platform with an LN behind it that we've, built ourselves. And in in very short terms, perhaps we can, develop later on, we focus on moderation and community management on, social media, with a focus on, toxic, harmful comments. We identify the most toxic, the most harmful, comments on social media in the comment sections, and we take care of them so that we make so that we can make the Internet and the social media in particular a better place and a place that is more, that looks better for discussions, for debates.
And, I can imagine there is a story behind the this software. Like, I don't know. You had the idea. One of your cofounder had the idea Yes. When it happened, like
So one of our cofounders, that is, currently our, our CEO was working in the European Parliament. He was working for, the vice president of the European Parliament. He was doing specifically the community management on, on social media. And back in 2022, which, we we all know coincides with the invasion of, Russia in in Ukraine, together with the waves of migrants that came to Western Europe, also a wave of harmful comments and certain, narratives, toxic narratives came at the same time in the comment sections of, our social media platforms. So together with the with the waves and the the narratives, the flow and the sheer volume of those comments became unbearable for a lot of political actors, specifically for the for the vice president of the European Parliament back then and many actors, but also businesses as well. So they were seeing comments like, oh, we don't want these Ukrainians. They should go back. They should stop stealing our jobs. Why are they not staying in in their countries to fight? But in a was really interesting was that, these messages were sent in a and composed in a really violent manner. And what is, our opinion and the opinion of, of our clients in an unacceptable manner in a toxic unacceptable manner. So at the time, my my colleagues, my now colleagues, looked around, and they couldn't find a solution that could handle that volume, that, toxicity effectively. So they got together. The the the team slowly expanded, and we've built a company around this idea of making the the social media a better place. And it all started in 2022. We're now in 2025 with over, over 70 clients, present in, over nine countries in Europe and, Latin America, and also supporting now, four heads of state.
Okay. And, and so there are different kind of clients, customers. So they can be, political parties or institutions or or, like, also companies.
Sure. So although we've, started in the political sphere, naturally, we we slowly but surely migrated to the Merkel side of things because, unfortunately, that toxicity that oftentimes starts in the social, in the political spheres slowly but surely migrates to, businesses, to, the the commercial side of, of our society. So we see on, on our clients, such as the the news media, media houses that suffer from the same toxic narratives, from the same toxic comments. And, the results are different and the effects are different, but they're just as harmful for everybody regardless of the nature, whether the organization that we work is political, commercial, or NGOs and institutions.
An interesting things, is the large language model built inside the company. So you use the, what you I mean, comments that were probably made by trolls or AI bots, and you trained AI. Right?
Yeah. So we we trained our own, large language model, specifically in a number of languages, mostly, European languages. And I'll tell you in a minute why we focused on on European languages. We work with, and we we do still work with linguists in specific, languages so that we can understand the context, the local context of, each country and each region, each, language in particular really, really well. And by understanding that, local context, we can identify subtleties in the language and so filter sentences and comments much more effectively much more effectively than, the the social platforms can do by themselves. When I say social platforms, I mean the big Meta, the Googles, the the TikToks, and and so on, which natively, of course, they do moderation, by themselves. But as we all know by now, they do it really, really poorly. So all the toxic content and also comments present on their platforms is because they don't want to or they cannot do moderation properly.
I I have some thoughts regarding, but, I would like to ask you, something about, maybe your professional background, if you'd like.
And Sure. So I have, a very mixed, background, in the sense that I, I have a a love for, on the one hand, business, politics, and also, communication on the other side. So my academic background is in politics and international affairs. Soon after I, finished my studies, I, I delved into, the the world of business and, communication through, various roles. And I'm happy to say that the the project that I'm, working on, right now, TrollWall really combines these three aspects of of my life, which I'm really passionate about really, really well. So the the communication part, you know, the the social media, the business, it's an obvious one, but also the the, political aspect of it.
And, if you like something more about, your personal background, I don't know, like, where did you came from?
So I'm I'm I'm originally from, from Romania, but I, I spent, probably now half of my, career in The United Kingdom where I, also completed my, my academic studies, where I also, worked for a number of years. And now I travel in between my my home country of Romania and, London, England. So if you're gonna ask me where my home is, unfortunately, I don't have an answer at the moment. I'm I'm a a citizen of Europe, although my fellow English friends might disagree that, yeah, it's still in The UK, it's still Europe, but yeah.
Yeah. It's a complex situation.
It's a complex situation. Let let's not get into it now. Maybe in the second podcast. No.
I I I was thinking about, like, because comments can be very toxic, and, at the same time, there could be also, like, a good manner, maybe, to to say that you disagree about something. So how can both happen? Like, be because I understand that, nowadays, with, automation technology, AI, like a country or a political party could actually attack another political party or another country, showing that, the population is thinking something, but maybe this is not true. So how to protect the, can be a political party, can be, like, a politician, can be a country from this kind of attacks, but at the same time, also allowing people to say, hey. I disagree about this, specific, thing.
Well, the quick and easy answer and the probably the obvious one would be moderation. Political entities should, should take care of their moderation. For the sake of this discussion, let's, focus on, on social media. So you mentioned attacks, and these attacks and, the the influencing of minds by certain political, actors happens in a few ways as far as we've been able to to identify this. So we mentioned already the the sheer volume of comments. So these attacks always always come with huge volumes of of comments that want to carry a certain narrative. In other words, the more you repeat an idea, albeit lie, at some point, somebody is likely to believe that idea or that lie. So the the volume that I was talking about. On the other hand, another interesting aspect that happens is the the violence that I already mentioned, the toxicity of the comments. So the same narratives also come in a violent manner so that normal people, normal citizens that would usually engage with political content get deterred from engaging in the discussion. So they get scared. They get they they get pushed away from getting involved in the discussion and starting a an actual debate over a set of policy, over certain ideas. Any kind of discussion in a violent environment is less likely to happen. So on the one hand, you push them away. On the other hand, you repeat it enough times until somebody believes you. And there's so many examples out there in in Europe if we look at, the Brexit vote. It's a it's an easy, it's an easy example. If we look at the elections in, 2024 and 2025, all across Europe, We see this pattern on and on and on, with, with certain actors pushing certain, certain narratives through the common sections, but not only, of course, they rely on things like bot farms and troll farms to push, certain narratives enough times. But, specifically, we focus on, on common sections.
And, I was wondering, like, this, kind of attacks came from foreign actors, mainly, like, outside Europe or also inside Europe or party against party, I don't know, inside the European Union, inside that specific country.
I would say both. However, when it comes to the the volume and the resources, they usually come from, outside of, of Europe. But opposing parties from within a specific country, they also look at what worked for others, and they slowly adapt the the same tactics, but often with smaller resources. So they they don't have the the resources that state actors often have. So we see the same kind of attacks, the same, kind of, narratives, opposing narratives in between, parties from a specific country, but at a lower scale on a smaller volume than compared to to state actors. But what it works for states also works for any kind of actor.
Yeah. I I'm thinking, like, about the future. And, because nowadays, it's so easy to create the bots. And, now also with AI, probably everyone will be able also to say, hey, Alexa, create some some bots. And, and so once of the, sometimes they talk about, registration with identity at the to to know the identity of a person. I think also to avoid this kind of, trolls. At the same time, that profilation is something that, I don't know. Not everyone would like to to have a sort of identity connected to to the Internet?
Yeah. So if so far I have been speaking, let's say, in the name of, of the project and the the company that I, that I represent, I would also like to give you a personal opinion and a personal view on this. I do think that, Boltzkol and Bob Farms are an issue and, are an issue that we could address because it's so obvious by now that it's affecting our democracy overall. And I am, in fact, a a big advocate of building social media platforms that rely, in fact, on identification. So banks can do it if your cell phone provider can do it, and you you have to verify yourself in order to open, you know, a subscription or a bank account, why wouldn't you be obliged to do it on on social media? So it's fine if you have an opinion, maybe even a a controversial opinion, but there's an identity behind it. And it's so much easier to to control what's going on on, on social media. And that's not to say that your opinions, your, ideas shouldn't be valued or shouldn't be taken into consideration. Quite the opposite. So you know who's behind it. And if you say something really, really toxic or, if you promote certain, you know, violent ideas, you could also be held accountable, which is only normal in my opinion. But it would also fix a lot of, a lot of other, smaller problems. And I I do agree that might just be the solution.
I wonder, like, because I see both pros and cons. And, and, actually, I don't have a clear idea about about it.
I don't know what you say the cons are.
As I said, I I I see the pros. About the cons, it could be, but I'm not sure, of course, that people then, they don't feel free to say what they think about. Like, because, but I I think it's maybe related to if the citizen feel that he or she is safe in that, country, in that, I I think that the person maybe could, could say what's, in enough in, with without, applying auto censorship, because often, I think we we end up doing it.
I don't know if I was clear. At at the same time, isn't democracy all about protecting personal freedoms? So if the democratic system is healthy enough and strong enough, you could say anything, of course, within certain boundaries, and, nothing would happen to you. You would, feel protected, and you would be, in fact, protected by the system, by the state, and you would be defended. On the other hand, when democracies become less democratic, if we can, if we can put it like that, that's when personal freedoms and, personal rights become an issue? Isn't it actually in less democratic and more dictatorial states that citizens are more at risk? If they say something without, you know, giving names of of states. But we we could, of course, call China, The USSR, and other, more tyrannical states. Because that that is the alternative. Right?
Yeah. Exactly. Like, a in like, I I can suppose that maybe, also in those places. I mean, they can receive attacks. And so I wonder, like, if in those places, where that are less democratic, like, an identity to to access to such a network is, is applied. So then people would not be able to, like, express their their idea without, having, you know, like, like, in places that are not very democratic. If users express their idea, then, they can be, like, punished
because And this is, where the the other really important pillar of a strong democracy comes in, which is the rule of law. When you know that institutions, will will protect you, you won't be scared to to voice your opinions. But in in less democratic systems, that rule of law pillar, that umbrella over everything when you know it's not there, who's gonna be there to to protect you? So they they go hand in hand. And I I do agree that in, states like, China or maybe Russia, something like this, maybe it wouldn't be wise to to be implemented in Europe, on the other hand, and some countries in Europe. I don't see why not.
So but I really like the to think about this kind of topics because I think that, in some way, yeah, as we said, there are some pros, there are some cons, and, we are the one, I mean, thinking about, problems and solution that, I mean, we are not the one that will decide if there will be an identification on such a networks, but I think that is very useful today.
Yeah. Exactly. Unfortunately, we we do have the power to vote. We do have the liberty to debate and to have these, kinds of discussions unlike in many other places, in the world. But here you go. That's, another good idea for a third podcast. We're gonna make a a series out of this and, make concrete discussions.
Yeah. It will be it will be actually also. And, I I was thinking, like, do you know if other countries like, we mentioned China, we mentioned Russia, or whatever. If they are having some other kind of attacks, some, I don't know, between, countries, not non European countries or maybe by European yeah. I don't know. Like, if there are also company, maybe similar to to the one, like, to troll, wall, in other places that are non European places.
Are you referring to competitors of, of ours that offer the the same service
that come from places like China or Russia? Or Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, like, also if, let's say, Russia has to, in some way, have if Russia has the same problem about other, strong, countries or whatever that they are also using this kind of attacks?
It's it's hard to say, in my opinion. One, because, we don't, really follow what happens on the on the Russian social media and the Russian, Internet. Also, when it comes to China, if you take into account the the gray the great wall of, of the Chinese Internet that that blocks everything that, doesn't have any of the the big social platforms that we do, doesn't have the the Googles, the YouTubes, while at the same time, we accept, TikTok. It's it's hard to say. But saying this, it it does look like, they have more leverage over what's going on in the West than the leverage that we as westerners have over what's going on in China, Russia, and other similar countries. But when it comes to to attacks, I honestly wouldn't be able to to tell you. I'd like to to believe that we, reciprocate. What we get is also what we give back in in time, but but I I wouldn't know for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. It will be very interesting to know all these, I don't know how to call them, underground attacks, of bots. Because, I mean, people are not aware of them. They just read a comment, and they think, okay. That person is quite mad about, certain thing. But it could be that it's just AI. And,
It often is it often is all these, farms that propagate certain messages. It's more and more difficult to tell if behind a profile or behind a comment is a real person or, just an algorithm. It often happens that, you you end up arguing in the comment sections over a stupid idea with an algorithm that there's no person behind it. And while at first, it might look funny, and you might think, oh, I just spent fifteen minutes of my day arguing with nobody with a computer. I I think when it comes to decision makers and institutions and political parties and and brands, it should make them think that if we can already do these things with artificial intelligence, we should really take artificial intelligence much more seriously, and we should be trying harder to fight fire with fire. And as a matter of fact, this is this is what we do. So if, if actors fight us, using all sorts of AI tools, we have no choice but, to build our own AI tools and and fight them back. And that's what we do, at least in the case of, of moderation.
And, yeah, I was thinking that, actually, now with a comment, it's quite easy to to to not be able to understand if there is a person behind the or an algorithm. Nowadays, also with, with a video. So we are quite, this is quite problematic. And, also, I'm thinking that, arguing actually with a person on Internet just chatting. I I saw that, it doesn't matter about the language, but most of the time is toxic. This is from my experience that, it is not very easy to, communicate with a person in, about complex topics, just chatting because we cannot really empathize with the other person. We don't see the other person. Of course. So I think he also, about places where this can happen, could be in real real life. And because of your, passion that you mentioned, one is technology and the other one is politics. I wonder if you thought about, these work maybe debates or, like, contamination between different thoughts and ideas can happen.
Like Yes. So I, I was mentioning the the narratives that are, spread. And, of course, they, they can happen. And you you raised the two ideas there. So the the conversation that you you have with and perhaps oftentimes, an AI system. And were you referring strictly in the comment sections when, when you're describing?
Yeah. I was thinking, yeah, that, I don't know. Someone post on a Facebook page, and then there are comment there there is the comment section, but could be also in other places of social network, like, but, yeah, we can think about, the specific example of the comment section. So the Yes.
So, of course, minds can be changed. Ideas can be, really be pushed forward. Narratives, can be can be spread really easily In now even in a in a conversational manner, as you said, you can you can chat with a bot and have the it can have the same kind of idea and can almost sometimes, convince you of a of a certain idea. But as you said, that conversation doesn't feel okay. It doesn't feel natural. It feels kind of, toxic. And we we do understand that because often what happens is that a certain AI, system, an AI bot uses simple algorithms of open AI of PaaGPT. There's a PaaGPT, interface to it, which doesn't really understand, local context. It doesn't really understand the the local history, the the local development. It just has simple ideas that it knows it needs to to push, forward. But as I said, the the key to that is just the repetition of the same ideas on and on and on and on. And we really resonate with that local context that this is why at the beginning of the the conversation, I I told you that when it comes to to the languages that we've, we've developed we've developed, we focused on mostly the the European ones. This is, on the one hand, where we work, but on the other hand, we understand the fact that the big players, the the metas of the world, the Googles of the world, usually, focus on big languages. So English, German, in some cases, maybe even Italian. But when it comes to smaller languages like, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, smaller languages, they don't really spend, much resources. They don't really spend much time on developing those languages. But as a result, the moderation they do in house on those specific languages is really, really poor. So they work with very few linguists. They work with very few, local experts and very few moderators at the at the end of the day, and this is what we do differently. We process enormous, sets of, of data, amounts of data with local context so that we understand what people talk about really, really well. And, that's that's, I I guess, the the key to, on the one hand, keeping that space clean from bots, from trolls, from toxic in in general, but also, to promoting healthy discussions, healthy debates.
And, to maybe give, an idea about, the the amount of data, do you have any example to to share?
When it comes to beta, what I can tell you is that it, it fluctuates a lot. It's, it's like a a sea when waves, come and go. We've seen the the biggest heats of, of the data we processed, of course, naturally around, electoral events. So in 2024, we probably saw the the highest peaks of, data of comments being dropped on, on social platforms. One interesting case we we worked in was the, where the Romanian elections of twenty twenty four, with some of our clients having over 500,000, comments on each social account per month, which is an enormous amount for a small country, a small, language. So over they they usually have about three or four, social accounts, per political party, that would equate to over 2,000,000 comments per month, for just one political actor. Just so you you imagine the the kind of scale, that was going on.
Yeah. I I was thinking about the infrastructure and the the AI model that has to analyze, that quantity of message. But, yeah, for for with technology, it's quite easy to do that, but one only. No? Yeah. Absolutely. And, I was thinking, how do you imagine, like, the future? Okay. Let's think about, I mean, democracy, like, in ten years, twenty years. Have you ever made this?
I tried a few times, and then a couple of years would pass, and my, my predictions would, would ruin themselves, especially, with the advent of, of AI and technology. I mean, just looking back at how the world, looked like, five, ten, fifteen years ago. I mean, at the beginning of, of my career and how I got into, to, politics, international affairs, and and communication, it was back in, in 2014 when, again, Russia had, invaded allegedly invaded Crimea, and they they took over the the Crimea with their, little green men. Now just, a little over ten years, there's a full fully fledged war going on in, in Ukraine. And we in Europe back then used to see The United States as the the beacon of democracy. Right? We would look up to them and think, oh, this is this is an example. This is, we should aspire to. Now less than, less than fifteen years later, We look at what's happening in the in The United States, what, Trump is saying, and how their new product system is becoming less and less, fragile. It's almost like they they can sell anything, and nobody can, dispute them. No nobody can, can really debate them. And at the same time, in Europe, we seem to to hold with our teeth to democracy and really want to to protect it and go forward with it. I think, looking looking forward, inevitably, one of the biggest players and the the biggest decisive factors of our democracy will be the, the aspect of of war on the one hand, and on the other hand, technology. How we go about and what we do about the the war that's going on on our doorsteps and how effective we're gonna be at fighting it. And on the other hand, technology. Will we be able to protect our democracy? Will we be able to use technology to develop our democracy with things, as you said, perhaps developing social networks that require you to authenticate yourself and you can only create one account per, social ID? Or will we completely crush it by, making it worse and worse with the likes of, TikTok? That is clearly, in my opinion, an enemy to to democracy. I'm returning to to TikTok here. So, yeah, I, I would say it it depends on on these two aspects, and, it's ultimately up to us to to make the world, a better place. And, I I can confidently say that specifically what we're doing in in our team is exactly this. We're trying to make the world a a better place by making, the social media a better place and in turn, and as a result, open democracy and building democracy.
I'm curious about TikTok. Do you think it it is a threat for democracy more because it it comes from a foreign country or because it's, very addicting for people? Because I also tried it, and it is, you cannot really stop looking at it. Yes.
So when it comes to TikTok, I, I see a lot of decision makers. A lot of people on, you know, televisions and podcasts and so on really hiding behind their words, when describing TikTok. I'm gonna be honest and and more direct because, that's that's how, that's how I like it. I think it's definitely a really nasty drug, and it should be avoided. So on on the topic of addictiveness. On the other hand, of course, it's a tool that comes from the outside world, if we can call it like that. Right? It's, it's made by, a state which is not necessarily our friend, maybe not anymore. And, it's a it's a dangerous tool. And let's just look at the way it's used and treated at home, on home ground. So Chinese kids have access to a very similar platform, but with educational content. Now have you ever seen the feed on the Chinese TikTok for Chinese kids? How it looks like compared to what we get in Europe and and the West? I saw something about
but haven't really investigated a lot.
Yes. So it has very clear limits. So they can only use it, a number of hours a day. It's it's not unlimited like, like we use it here twenty four hours a day. And the content is strictly controlled, and it focuses on educational content. So crafts, new languages, engineering, and then we look at what we get in Europe and the The United States, the nastiest of the of the content that rot our brains.
Keith is now I'm joking. But, like, yeah. Yeah. I understand understand that, sometimes, less educational content, is is the one that, the people search for and especially if they're young.
And and it is not only my opinion, that that it's harmful for citizens in in general. But if we look at again, I'll I'll go to back to the, Romanian election, case of 2024, we've had this one candidate, one independent candidate that received now just in the the last few weeks, it has been proven that it has, received support from, the the Russian state mostly through TikTok. So the Chinese control TikTok, and they took through the meddle meddling of algorithm and through pumping millions of, dollars, they skyrocketed his accounts to number nine globally in 2024. So a nobody a nobody candidate was skyrocketed on number nine in the algorithms in the the tags used on on TikTok and ended up winning the first round of presidential elections. So going back to democracy and the threat that technology and, certain states can can pose to it, in a matter of months, they can change. They can almost they didn't really succeed. They can almost change the the the whole structure of a democratic state through one single app, through some algorithms, through some AI narratives, and just a few million euros. So it's fear by now that it's not just a simple tool. It's, a weapon. It's a weapon for hybrid warfare, and we we shouldn't be hiding behind our, politeness, our European politeness. We should call it the way it is.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Like, this, system. But I think he also about the, the other big tech, like, also x, Twitter in some way. We don't know the algorithm, that, there is behind. We we don't know, like, also for Facebook, Meta. Like, I will say that maybe, I actually would like, more transparency related to the algorithm, because I think, yeah, absolutely. Like, information is power, and, with information, you can change it than, the power that is, yeah, I mean, political institutional power can be changed.
And if it wasn't a weapon and if it wasn't really as important as we we say it is, The United States wouldn't fight so hard to get control over a talk in The United States to take, control away from, from ByteDance and control it themselves. And the heads of state, Trump and Xi Jinping, I think it was last week, they they were supposed to meet or there was, recently in any case to discuss specifically TikTok and, them giving up, control to the the The United States over not the app itself, but the algorithm because, that's really what's at stake.
It's incredible how how it can be important and how they can change people life. Because algorithm at the end of the day is like, I don't know, a page with some lines, with something written, inside, but then, it it keeps people, like, how do you say? Like, in front of the screen for days.
Yeah. It keeps them blocked. Yeah. Just like a like a drug would do. Of course. Exactly.
And, I mean, we saw that technology now is very important for I mean, it's in every in every aspect of our life and also related to politics. And, I wonder if you, thought about, any other I would say let's say, good use of AI for politics, for democracy. I don't know. Sort of assistant that,
Yes. So we are, fortunately and and unfortunately, at the same time, our, our road map is, is so long. It's it's so big with so many ideas that the biggest challenge is picking the the one that's most relevant and the most, important of, of all. Just, just to name a few, we've, recently actually, a few months ago, we've released some some new features. I would mention, the the drafting of of answers, for our clients. So in very short, our our clients can build their own, databases. They can create their own, assistance where they can upload certain, files. And based on those files and that database, we can draft answers, for them for the comments they receive on, on social media. Now the keyword here is drafting. We never reply on their behalf on, on social media. We would, we wouldn't allow that to to happen. But although it might seem like, like a basic like an easy idea drafting answers, that really allows, in our case, political, actors to engage more with their audience because this is an issue a lot of them, face right now. So they simply don't have the resources to pay people to sit down in front of computers, read through the comments, and reply to to comments and engage with the with the audience, which I think it's it's so important and it's so fruitful for our, again, for our democracy that when political actors, when your MP posts about something, a new piece of, of law that he or she, supports, and you want to ask them a question, oftentimes, people, citizens will will do it on social media in the comment sections. And, again, oftentimes, they will never receive an answer because they simply don't have the resources to reply. And this is what we, what we, try to do. We draft the the answers for them, which they can, which they can tweak and really engage with the with the audience. Of course, we also do, other more community management, related features such as sentiment analysis, which, again, it's, it's really important for political actors so that they can better understand the pulse of their voter base, of their audience, and what people, feel because it's really, really difficult to read through and to gauge the sentiment of hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of of comments and the opinions of, of so many people.
Yeah. I I was thinking about, about, this approach of using such a networks for, also in this in this case, educating people. Not not really educating, informing people about a certain thing. So if the citizen ask a question instead of having the, the president, that is replying, a chatbot is replying, but using all the all the knowledge. And, because several times, like, in the civic tech field, there is this thing about building the platform, from scratch. And, while on social networks, there is already a user base. Because of most of the times, they end up not being used, the software related to civic tech. While people are using Facebook, Twitter, and and so on. And so tools that run on those platform, they have probably an higher probability to be actually used.
Totally. Yes. At at the same time, I would say, it I I fully agree. They, a lot of, a lot of political tech ends up, being unused and but I do appreciate, and I I do encourage politicians, specifically, to try neutrals, to be open minded and to adopt, neutrals going back to the idea that I mentioned earlier, fighting fire with fire. It's I don't see successful politicians in the near future even winning election cycles without using the latest technologies, without using, artificial intelligence at a large scale, whether it's, you know, replying to the audience or segmenting the the the population and the the voter base. They have to adopt, and they have to adapt really, really fast. And amongst many of those those tools that they try, it's bound that some of them will be, not very useful, and they they won't, end up adopting them. But I do think it's, important that they stay open minded.
And do you think that nowadays, politician are aware of this kind of tools? Because, a lot of in my impression, a lot of times, people that, knows about politics, then they don't know about technology.
That is very true and, somewhat painful for us, if I can, if I can put it like that. I do agree that politics is a a weird industry. It's, it often feels like a like a past that, in Europe, you you have the political families. You you have the the conservatives, you you have the the leftist, that even at a European level, they don't really talk to to each other. So they they will vote together in the European Parliament. Right? The the lefties from, Italy together with the the leftist from France and and Germany. But when it comes to sharing ideas and, sharing tools, that often doesn't really happen, like it happens in the in The United States, for instance. So you you would have the the Democrats or the the Republicans from, one state to another really sharing and exchanging ideas. In Europe, this this doesn't really happen, and it's, quite, quite unfortunate. So in our case, we go country by country, political party by political party, in in trying to, you know, open their eyes, one by one. But what I would also say is that, I'm happy to see that, events such as the the political tech summit in, in, Berlin is a much needed event to gather professionals from, from the political sphere and let them, change ideas. And I know, the the organizer of the event was, was present on your podcast just a a few episodes ago.
Yeah. The was very interesting also talking to Joseph Flinch. And, I I have, just a couple of question more. And, so, what is for you democracy, like, from a also from a political science or, point of view or liking your opinion.
Very good question. I should've, I should've known you're gonna ask me this. It's, it's in the title of your podcast.
No. I I don't I don't always ask, for it, but, I think yeah. It's it's interesting because now on. A a lot of times we think about, concept. Maybe we I don't know. Capitalism maybe is different for me and for you or democracy and, it's part of human nature. And, I always like to to see also the the other point of view, like, of other people.
I think without realizing, I described it earlier on. I, I mentioned liberties. I think first and foremost, democracy is is based on personal and civil, freedom and liberty. But at the same time, on on the rule of law, this is just, to make sure we stay within certain boundaries. And if something happens, if our civil, liberties are threatened, somebody or something will protect those liberties. And I know this is a really simplistic way to to describe it, but this is, this is the the way I see it. And and, yeah, I believe that's that's the core of it. Liberties and and protection and strong institutions.
Thank you. And, and do you have, any message for the people that, are working in the space of, political tech? So people that are, I don't know, finding new way of governance, maybe using technology or, like, tools similar, to TrollAI to TrollWall.
Yeah. Again, I I think I mentioned it, just, just a few minutes ago. I would urge them to to stay open minded and to to at least try new methods and, and new tools if they are to to stay in the field. That's one idea. And the second one is to communicate between themselves, is to communicate with each other even if they're from opposing sides of the the political spectrum. There's so much they can learn, from each other. There there's so much they can, adopt from each other, and at the end of the day, all of us would would gain from it.
So thank you, Alex. Thank you a lot.
I actually have a a question for you, if I may Yeah. Absolutely. If you're not running out of time. You asked me a really interesting question. What was, democracy for me? What what does it mean for you?
Good question, actually. I was not preferred.
Me neither. There is no. No.
I, as I said, I think there is, in some way, a lot of confusion related to the thermo because, I mean, demo and, Kratos, so it's like a power to the people. But I think that, I mean, nowadays, the democracy that we see is quite different from the democracy as it was conceived. Because, nowadays, we have the representative system, that is, it it it was defined as, there is the famous phrase by, it was from Churchill, if I'm not wrong. That is like, I don't remember the exact phrase that democracy is very bad, but all the other systems were even worse. Worse.
Yes.
And so but I I think as as you said, that also if people are, I don't know, someone who was always, from, I don't know, voting left leftist parties because, from his family and so on, and the other person is, I don't know, voting for another party. I think that is, nowadays with technology, I think that some paradox can also change. And this is why it's, it is so important to talk about what to do with democracy also because, there is AI that is changing everything, and there are new ways of doing worse, maybe with, farm bots and so on. And so I think that we should really sit down at the table. It doesn't matter if I'm left, if if or right or right wing. We should all all sit at the table and decide what to do because it as we said, like, I mean, it was maybe before the interview, like, I mean, democracy can be, like, in the future, can be, like, like, I don't know, the best place where everyone is happy, and so on, or it could be, like, worst place ever. So now we we are humans, and humans sometimes in, in the past were not really, how do you say, good. Now we have technology. And also using technology, we we really, we we didn't really make a good use of technology, I have to say.
Historically speaking, yes. You're you're probably right. Yes. But are you are you more pessimistic or more optimistic? Do do you think it's gonna be it's gonna turn out really, really well or really, really bad?
I am I don't know. But I I would say optimistic in the the longer term and pessimistic in the short one.
Yes. Let let's leave it like that. Let's leave it on the the optimistic side then. Okay. So thank you a lot, sir. It was, Thank you. Thank you, Alessandro. It's been a real pleasure.
Awesome for me. Thank you.
