Between 4th and 6th of October #hackhate Hackathon: Antisemitism will take place in the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The goal of the project is to combat antisemitism and online hate speech. The event is organized by the Embassy of Israel to Poland, Tikkunology Foundation (by PI Startups), Digital University Foundation, under a honorary patronage of the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Republic of Poland.
A hackathon is a programing marathon, during which coders and application designers are faced with a certain task to solve in a short time.
What is unique about the #hackhate Hackathon Antisemitism is the scope of database made available to the participants. Thanks to the partners of the project, participating teams will be able to review over 5 million entries- web pages, discussion boards, comments and social media posts in search of hate speech and antisemitism.
“Seeing as Israel is the Startup Nation, it made sense for us to use technology to try and solve the age-old problem of antisemitism. The history of Poland, where Jews have lived side by side with Poles for more than 1000 years, is wonderfully presented in the POLIN Museum, so it made the choice for the venue obvious. Cooperating with young professionals from around the world sends a strong message about the importance of working together to make the world better”, said Tal Ben-Ari Yaalon, Deputy Ambassador of Israel.
“We strive to use technology as our ally, says Jakub Schimmelpfennig, CEO of Tikkunology by PI Startups. We can all experience the tremendous changes it brings. We think it is time to use the technology not only to maximize financial profit or to analyze user’s online activity, but to use it for scalable tools solving social problems,” added Schimmelpfennig.
Each of the teams participating in the #hackhate Hackathon Antisemitism will be comprised of young professionals coming from Israel, Poland, Germany and the United States, each with a different knowledge and experience. The coders will work with designers and business specialists to create a solution which is both cutting edge technology and a promising market product.
Teams will be able to use expertise of mentors – experts, researchers, entrepreneurs, such as Prof. Michal Bilewicz, Supreet Singh Manchanda, Bianka Siwińska, Michał Wroczyński and many others- experts on machine learning, AI, data processing, language analysis, data scraping and gaming.
The results of the work will be evaluated on Sunday, 6th of October, by a jury headed by Jowita Michalska from the Digital University. The winning project will receive an award sponsored by the Amazon Web Services and the US Embassy and an ongoing support of mentors, with the goal of further development and market implementation.
The organizers of the project hope that the first edition of #hackhate Hackathon will raise awareness to problems of hate speech, exclusion and discrimination.
#hackhate Hackathon: Antisemitism will last for 48 hours, starting on Friday, 4th of October.
More information: https://hackhate.com/