Authors: Denis Tahiri, Dallandyshe Xhaferri
"-How many people do you have?
-25
-I want 25 app downloads
- What is this? How can I force people?
- This is not up for debate!"
This conversation took place inside the office of a director in a ministry in the capital, where it was not a question of causing government applications, but of "Aktiv1st" of the Socialist Party, where the likes, shares and numbers of large number of viewers of live videos on social media of the main ministers of the government and the prime minister, who, according to the evidence provided, are mostly public administration employees.
“The main discussion in the corridors is: how many points do you have?” says an official in a ministry on condition of anonymity. During the conversation with him, he explains how this app works.
"Each institution has 4 to 5 people who are responsible for the application, its downloads, monitoring political activism, etc. They are political appointees, that is," he says, adding that regular meetings are held in central and local institutions to monitor the progress of the application and its users.
"I don't understand why there is this violence, violence against people in 2023. They want numbers, they don't care about opinions," the official continues, claiming that panic about job insecurity has spread in institutions. "It's not the work you are valued for, but the activist."
Based on this conversation, through a verification in the Google Play Store it turned out that this application had more than ten thousand downloads, while in the Apple App Store it is impossible to find the number of downloads, but the popularity of this application captures extremely high numbers, ranking as the sixth most downloaded social network in Albania.
What is common, on both different platforms, are the comments that describe this application as a means of propaganda and exerting pressure on the public administration.
"This app is being used by the government for propaganda. And it doesn't stop there: It is violating every employee's right and collecting personal data," says one of the comments on the Google Play Store platform, which among other things emphasizes that this app is being used by the Socialist Party, which is also the ruling party in Albania, to force all state administration employees to download and distribute government propaganda.
"You have to like, comment and share on Facebook, etc., the posts of the Prime Minister, the party, etc. If someone does not agree to participate in this application, I am afraid that they will be blackmailed and even fired from their job," - is written in the comment of citizen E. Gjergji.
On the other hand, similar comments have not been lacking on the App Store platform, with one of them emphasizing that this application is used by the government, which forces employees to participate in the SP's political propaganda.
How does the "Akvtiv1sti" of the Socialist Party work?
"For the internal affairs of the Socialist Party," - is the answer that the SP Communication Office gave to the ACQJ, when asked what was the reason for creating this application.
However, the application is available to the general public, not just SP staff and supporters. To open an account in the "Aktiv1sti" application, users must first provide some personal information such as: first name, last name, email, municipality where they live and a phone number. After creating the account, a link is sent to the e-mail provided to confirm the account, in which a 6-digit code is sent.
However, this superficial verification, according to sources close to the administration, is only an initial verification, and beyond that, dedicated people in the state department also perform an in-person verification of whether or not the people who download and use it are employees of the administration.
In its response, SP states that the application is dedicated to a target group within the party, and aims to "much faster communication within their political family". However, this application requests and collects personal data that affects a much larger number of the population than just the socialist family.
Officially, this application, according to the description given in the App Store, is " a platform of the Socialist Party of Albania, which gives the opportunity to any person who has an idea and desire to participate in local or national competitions, to advance their initiatives, and to be an active factor in the community where they live."
But, there are only four initiatives in it. “ Promote Agrotourism in your city ”, an initiative that extends throughout the territorial space of the country, “ Donate a book, enrich the library ”, an initiative for the city of Laç, “ Digitalize Marko ” and “ Schools are not fortresses ”. What is striking is the fact that these initiatives, apart from a photo, a title and a few lines of text, do not have any information on how you can support other than clicking the “Support” button.
The moment you open your account in this application, below the profile name appears a wide menu of activities and options, such as Social, News, Posts, Contests, but all of which are focused on clicking on the "news" posted by administrators on government achievements and various events of various members of the ministerial cabinet.
In the focus of the main menu are all the posts of the socialist governors and mayors of Albania, previously published on their social networks such as "Facebook" and "Instagram", where users are directed to the posts on special profiles for further interactions.
As far as the "News" category is concerned, what is noticed is that there are news reports that are carried out by media very close to the socialist government, which always put the government's activity in a positive light. On the other hand, the "Posts" category includes user posts promoting the good work of the government. Meanwhile, the "Competition" category is what highlights the "real workers" of the app, where the 100 users with the most points are reflected and the top three receive medals.
The question that remains is what price do these digital medals represent?
A like 5 points, a share 15 points
"There is a vetting process for the people who are accepted," says a source close to an institution that offers Services throughout the territory of the Republic of Albania.
For more than a month, the testimonies collected under the condition of anonymity managed to create a clear overview of the distribution of this application across state institutions.
" It has been on the AppStore since November. There are people in our institution who have 1500+ points so far ," the source explains, saying that "I have the impression that 90% of the institution's employees are already users of the app."
The information obtained from different sources on the distribution calendar of this application in the administration has also been confirmed by the suspicions of the IT experts consulted by ACQJ.
Meanwhile, another person employed in a directorate under one of the largest municipalities in the country explained to us the scoring system that this application has.
" You will enter Edi Rama, Belinda Ballukut and other ministers, and you will always like and share from within the application. One like 5 points, one share 15 points ," he explains.
" They asked us for a list of names, which are then verified on the platform to see if they have their own accounts and how active they are ," said another source in the Customs Directorate, adding that in the event of " failure to open the given number of accounts, your job could be at risk . "
Based on these complaints, using the "Aktiv1sti" application, ACQJ managed to verify in January, that of the top 100 fans (users with the highest points listed in the application) more than 60% are employees of the public administration, a part who also hold high management positions in the administration.
32 of them are employed in the Municipality of Tirana, in positions such as Municipal Police officers, high-level specialists, archivists and even administrators of municipal units, the rest are managers of directors and subordinates in the public administration.
Following a request and refusal by the SP media representatives for an interview with Mr. Etjen Xhafa, Secretary for Digital Coordination, ACQJ received the Socialist Party's reaction via an official email, in which this party claims that the idea of creating this application came " as part of the continuous modernization of the Socialist Party". To our question about why this application was created, the SP responded by saying that the reason for its creation was "for the internal affairs of the Socialist Party".
At the same time, ACQJ asked Mr. Endri Fuga, Director of Communications of the Prime Minister, for a comment on the accusations raised by administration employees regarding the obligation to dismiss "Aktiv1stin" and to be active in it, who rejected them.
"This is untrue and there is no fact about this. So apart from rejecting it as an accusation, I have nothing else to add, " he said.
Asked whether the Albanian government has ever discussed the social media performance of various government departments and strategies for increasing their numbers in any of its cabinet meetings, formal or informal, Fuga replied that " in government meetings, decisions that the government makes are discussed."
But this assertion of the Prime Minister's spokesperson contradicts what Taulant Muka, former deputy Minister of Education in the "Rama 2" Government.
" In a government meeting that I attended, the topic of discussion was actually the performance of ministries. The table that was presented was a table of likes, shares, tweets, of each ministry, the Ministry of Education, Economy, Health, etc. ," says Muka, claiming that this is how the performance system on social networks was more or less evaluated based on the performance that the ministry had on them.
"I remember at that meeting, in fact, the Ministry of Education was criticized a lot because there was one of the deputy ministers who only received two likes and there was a 30-minute discussion by the Prime Minister about the likes, why are there so few when the reforms were so great," he says, adding that the discussion about performance at the government meeting lasted about 1 and a half hours.
Mr. Muka says that a platform was also introduced that automatically controlled how many likes and shares each institution received.
"On the other hand, he designed a situation where every administration employee would automatically be part of this system, where regardless of whether the employee liked or not a ministry status, they would automatically like and share it on social networks," he concludes.
Mr. Muka's claims that the performance of various ministerial cabinets on social media was discussed in government meetings are confirmed for ACQJ by people who have knowledge of the informal government meeting on January 4, 2023, at "Villa 31" in Tirana, in which he confirms that "a large part of the meeting was dedicated precisely to online government performance".
Asked about this, Mr. Fuga replied, " I don't know, but it doesn't work for me ."
How are social networks being used by the government?
The fact that social networks are widely used by political parties has already been proven during electoral campaigns. Meanwhile, what has recently begun to be investigated is the use of social networks by political parties and politicians to distort public perception of a politician or a political party. The Albanian Center for Quality Journalism, in an investigative article regarding likes, shares, and comments of politicians, managed to find that fake profiles were used on the pages of the most popular political figures in Albania not only to like, but also to comment.
In order to see if "Aktiv1sti" has had an effect on the increase of interactivity in the posts of the social networks of the ministers of the "Rama 3" government, we chose to do a simple analysis of numbers in four videos of any kind published in the months of June, December of of the year left behind and of the month of January 2023, for a number of cabinet ministers.
On June 15, the current Deputy Prime Minister, Ms. Belinda Balluku, in a video post on “Facebook”, has only 479 likes , 27 comments and 22 thousand views. Meanwhile, on December 12, the number of likes , comments and views have increased to the respective figures of 1 thousand, 73 and 53 thousand in the video post made by Ms. Balluku. Also, the increasing trend is seen in a video posted on January 12, where Ms. Balluku has received 7,5 thousand likes , 851 comments and 32 thousand views.
While Minister Olta Xhaçka, in a video post on June 2, had 182 likes , 12 comments and 62 thousand views, while on December 7, in another video post, Ms. Xhaçka had 2,2 thousand likes , 98 comments and 20 thousand views. A month later, in another video post , the number of likes for Minister Xhaçka marked a significant decrease, registering only 403 likes. A similar trend was followed by comments, with only 32 likes, while video views increased, numbering 34 thousand.
The analysis of the posting figures also included the Minister of State for Parliamentary Relations, Ms. Elsia Spiropali, who heads a ministry without portfolio. On June 13 of last year, a video posting would register 835 likes , 391 comments, and 5.1 thousand views. On December 12, in another video posting , Minister Spiropali would receive 4.7 thousand likes , 1.2 thousand comments, and 34 thousand views. While on January 10, for a video posting, Spiropali received 4.4 thousand likes , 527 comments, and 10 thousand views.
Given these results, there are fears that the app in question is designed to avoid the use of fake profiles, and instead use a more stable user base to amplify the government's message and distort public perception in the run-up to the elections and beyond. public administration.
“Since 2018, Facebook’s algorithm has elevated posts that encourage interaction between users to the top of the “table ,” a Washington Post observation from October 2021 claims, noting that for a subset of extremely partisan users, today’s algorithm can turn their pages into echo chambers where users hear only what they fail to hear.
Expert: the practice contradicts all possible Albanian and international laws
Gentian Progni, information technology expert, also analyzes the data that the "Aktiv1st" application collects.
" There are two types of access ," he says, explaining that the moment you install the application on devices with the Android operating system, you get access to photos, videos, messages, the phone's location, and have the ability to use them even when you have closed the application.
" There is also the second moment of installation, where you have to do a certification with your social account, so Instagram or Facebook ," he says, adding that it is an approval system that has access to all your profile data, from reading messages to who you like, share, etc.
Progni indicates that this application is built on the Firebase platform, which is a "Cloud" platform.
"You have the opportunity to build systems, databases, servers, etc. and through this system you process data and receive data, send notifications, etc.," he says, continuing to explain that "the moment these actions are taken, data is generated in the backend for each user. So if Gentian Progni is an employee of the Ministry of Entrepreneurship, a score is made for every action you have taken and according to those scores, you are given points or given credit . "
He further adds that the biggest problem he sees is because with the backend we can see how many times you opened the app, how much you used it, whether you stayed live until the end or not, whether you liked it and whether you removed the like after you did.
"All of these generate a PDF, which is unique for each directorate and is channeled into a larger network up to the ministry," he concludes.
The Commissioner for the Right to Information and Personal Data Protection, in response to questions from the ACQJ, states that the lawful processing of personal data requires compliance with Law No. 9887, dated 10.03.2008 “On the Protection of Personal Data” , adding that when the controller [data collector] processes personal data received from the data subject, he is obliged to inform the latter whether their provision is mandatory or voluntary.
The Commissioner places special emphasis on the Privacy Policy, for which he states: " The privacy policy must be easily accessible and clearly understandable for the subjects of personal data and published on the official websites of the controllers. For this purpose, to assist the controllers, a standard model has been approved, to which the controllers can refer and which is easily found on the official website of the Commissioner's Office."
But, what has been verified by the ACQJ is the fact that a privacy policy for “Aktiv1st” in Apple’s AppStore does not exist. When you search for this application’s privacy policy, it redirects you to the official website of the Socialist Party where the message appears: “ Your voice matters! Your perspective helps us find the best solution to help our Albania. Let us know your ideas and suggestions. Please fill out the form below and we will respond within a week.”
At the same time, on the Google Play platform, there is a privacy policy, simplified, almost TIP, in which it is known that this application collects data such as: location, email address, phone number, address, sms or mms and other in-app messages.
Expert Progni says that this application contradicts all possible Albanian and international laws.
"The GDPR law that the EU and America have adopted clearly states that this data should not be collected and processed," he says, citing the case of "Cambridge Analytica", which through data collection and processing managed to indirectly influence people's opinions about voting.
"The same thing is happening with Aktiv1st ," he emphasizes.
"Creating a sense of insecurity about the workplace and the idea that it is not the work you are being evaluated for but this [use of the application], is intolerable. It is everywhere in the administration – central and local; in fact even stronger in local. There are regular meetings to monitor the progress of the application and its use." - says the ministry official on condition of anonymity.
Asked if they managed to verify if there is pressure on the administration to use this application, Progni says that there are hundreds of messages a day.
"Of course I will never make it public, that people write to me that they were forced to install the application to share and like, etc.," he says, adding that he has tried to help many people.
" I helped them find a solution on how to escape to some extent without losing their jobs, by sharing the posts privately with the person in charge who gave them a code to monitor them, and maybe I helped them a little bit to not be part of this facade," he concludes.
"It's not the work you're valued for, but the activist," – this is the common expression of all the testimonies received by ACQJ from public administration employees.
