mastodon 4.8.0-nightly.2026-10-06Asociația pentru Tehnologie și Internet (the Association for Technology and the Internet) is a Romanian digital rights NGO, based in Bucharest.
We re-launched our newsletter!
Expect digital rights news, in #Romanian, straight in your inbox once per month.
Maria Angele in the main person behind this aggregation of news, deep-dives and recommendations. No AI agent was bothered with requests to generate content for us! We wrote it all ourselves.
Sign up: https://seu2.cleverreach.com/f/451815-428602/
Or read the already-published editions: https://apti.ro/lista-newsletter/
We published a new section on our website, called the Digital Right Bookshelf: https://apti.ro/raftul-pentru-drepturi-digitale/
Here, ApTI members list the books that have been personally helpful and enjoyable. Books that explore technology in its political, social, economical, philosophical dimension.
We will keep this up to date with new additions.
We published a message today, on our Telegram news aggregator and on our LinkedIn, looking at a recent report that the Cybersecurity Directorate of Romania has published.
It sort of reads like an ad?!?
The institution in charge of cybersec kinda reads like it's running an ad for a Croatian social media platform?!?
We wrote about the 2 most disturbing things in all of this:
If you have been interested in our work, in #Romania, we invite you to fill out this short online form and help us figure out what future activities you'd like to see form us: https://emulat.toolsforjournalists.org/form/#/3/form/view/cf36548237676e3fb1f49039aa8fe874/
Filling out the entire questionnaire takes 7 minutes at most. :)
If forms aren't your thing, you're always welcome to reach out to us here, or via out contact e-mail: https://apti.ro/contact/
We appreciate boosts for visibility within #Romanian #Mastodon & other Fedi instances
@edri@eupolicy.social published a message of solidarity with its members and allies facing pressure for their work on platform regulation.
We stand in with the organizations in the European Digital Rights network that do this brave work of crucial importance.
we published a report in #Romanian on recommender system algorithms, on whether they play by the rules of national and EU legislation (spoiler: they don't) and on their overall effect on democratic debate during electoral campaigns (spoiler: kinda toxic)
our conclusions and recommendations: https://apti.ro/content/cine-ce-vede-observatii-asupra-sistemelor-de-recomandare-ale-re%C8%9Belelor-sociale-in-context-electoral
full quantitative report: https://apti.ro/ApTI%20Social%20Media%20Monitoring%20Report.pdf
qualitative journal on the emotional experience of data collection: https://apti.ro/Jurnal_alegeri_2025.pdf
The #Romanian Senate voted on the Online Coming of Age Law, which would, in effect, mandate that all people who wish to use online services or browse websites identify themselves in order to validate their age.
This will clash with the fundamental rights of all people, and especially those of the children and teens that they pretend they want to protect.
We ask the second chamber to reject this proposal.
We wrote, in #Romanian, about the proposed Digital Omnibus project. Instead of simplifying the GDPR (and other regulations), the Commission is out to undermine the protections offered by this cornerstone of digital law. We can also clearly see how the proposed changes favor the genAI companies disproportionately, while doing almost nothing for small & medium companies in the EU.
https://apti.ro/content/GDPR-facut-ferfenita-sub-numele-digital-omnibus
We signed an open letter, along with other digital rights organizations, urging MEPs to protect rights and reject the call to delete transparency safeguard in AI Act
We sent FOIAs to the national institutions in #Romania designated as those responsible for ensuring compliance with human rights obligations under Article 77 of the AI Act and asked them for answers about their training in the field of artificial intelligence.
We published their answers, in Romaian, on our website: https://apti.ro/institutie-publica-caut-expertiza-in-ia
TL;DR - we observe a clear lack of expertise and a resignation about the lack of staff training in this area due to the cut in public budgets
We published an article on our site about surveillance and identification of private people. We started with how this stuff is done on TV and art installations.
Then, we take a look at what the AI Act has to say. On one hand, identification & categorization using AI fits into "unacceptable risk". On the other hand, we look at the recently published guidelines and we see how changing small details suddenly make this technology... less unacceptable...
Social network users' political opinions are part of free speech. Especially in an election campaign!
The Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) has published a first set of decisions aimed at complying with the regulations on online election campaigning.
Most of these BEC decisions are violations of the freedom of expression of social network users. BEC prevents voters from freely expressing their opinions and political preferences.
We usually talk about freedom of expression and fundamental rights. But lately, more and more people are asking "OK, but what about fighting disinformation?".
Increasing media literacy, providing accurate and coherent information from public institutions and tracking coordinated disinformation campaigns with major social effect are effective solutions for tackling disinformation.
Five ideas, in Romanian: https://apti.ro/cateva-idei-de-politici-publice-pentru-gestionarea-dezinformarii
We are kickstarting a new program, aimed at our Romanian community, called "Generația Generativă: Tinerii și inteligența artificială în era social media".
This program is funded by the #EfectivCivic program, courtesy of Fundația pentru Dezvoltarea Societății Civile, the Romanian American Foundation and Centrul pentru Jurnalism Independent.
We will give 6 presentations, in several cities, for high school and college students on media literacy and digital literacy.
https://apti.ro/incepem-programul-efectivcivic-pe-tema-educatiei-media