| Story | According to recent studies (Cambridge, at European Union level) The Czech Republic has been recorded as one of the most racist and nationalistic countries in Europe. Living here, we can say that the people are mostly accepting and nice. Unfortunately, people aren’t quite as nice online. The internet has become a breeding ground for awful, hateful messages, made worse by anonymity. Usually made toward those who are most vulnerable - the refugees. So, Nadace Varietas - the Czech NGO for an open society and supporting the integration of foreigners - decided to do something to challenge and change mentalities. “Hate Unplugged” – a project that evaluates all the negative energy wasted online (by writing hateful posts) and transforming it into positive by donating free electricity and data to the people in need (the exact people that were targeted by that hate online).
Using a mixture of social listening and complex sentiment analysis tools, we monitored the internet for months, recording the most hateful comments and negative energy, and calculating how much energy was wasted in the process. Applying a simple algorithm (how much a human being consumes as energy in a hateful manifestation + the energy consumed by the device he used, multiplied by the number of hateful post we found every day = 259 300 watts per year! We used the equivalent of this “wasted” negative energy to donate it to the people in need – the Nakivale Refugee Settlement in Uganda, where we've build Hello Hubs (hubs that’ll give free electricity and data) with the help of the Hello World organisation. |