The Romanian project LUMEN, created at the Romanian-American University, finalist at the Democracy Hackathon in Strasbourg
Romania was represented by a team of students from the Romanian-American University. Dragoș Velicu, graduate of the Faculty of Managerial Informatics and valedictorian, Tudor Damian, graduate of the Faculty of Managerial Informatics, and Marilena Ivanov-Voronenko, student at the Faculty of Law, impressed the Council of Europe with the LUMEN project.
The RAU student team developed an innovative open-source tool that exposes online manipulation and coordinated hate on social media without resorting to censorship, surveillance, or the storage of personal data.
Romanian innovation on the European stage
During the international hackathon “Hack the Hate, Renew Democracy” held at the Palais de l’Europe in Strasbourg, the Romanian-American University team earned the title of Finalist with the LUMEN project.
The competition brought together innovators, activists, and policymakers from the 46 member states of the Council of Europe under the New Democratic Pact for Europe and the Monaco Presidency of the Committee of Ministers, alongside No Hate Speech Week.
The problem: Artificially generated online outrage
Online hate and hate speech are no longer merely spontaneous public reactions. Increasingly, we are witnessing “manufactured consensus”: small networks of coordinated accounts rapidly spreading the same message until it appears to represent a mass popular movement.
The main analytical challenge stems from the fact that words used in a coordinated manipulation campaign can be identical to those used by real people in an authentic wave of opinion. For this reason, classic keyword-based detection methods fail.
Furthermore, conventional platform responses—mass user surveillance and content censorship/deletion—violate fundamental human rights.
The LUMEN Solution: “Describe, Don’t Censor”
The concept developed by the Romanian-American University team approaches the problem from a different angle: LUMEN exposes manipulation without deleting a single word and without tracking user identities.
Key features of the tool:
- Scoring system based on 5 behavioral signals: LUMEN evaluates the degree of coordination by analyzing repeated messages, unusual response speed, temporal synchronization, unjustified volume spikes, and deviations from normal posting patterns.
- Total privacy protection (Privacy by Design): Identities are encrypted using a one-way hash over limited time windows and then permanently deleted. No identity is ever stored.
- The human factor is essential: Any algorithm finding must be approved by a human evaluator before being published. Uncertain cases are marked as “insufficient evidence,” avoiding unfounded accusations.
- Open-source and transparency: The model is completely open to auditing. Anyone can re-run the algorithm to verify or contest the results.
Competition Overview: One Winner and Three Finalists
Following evaluations by the international jury, a single winner was designated, alongside three finalist teams (including the team from Romania):
- United Kingdom (Winner – Project Quorum / MOSAIC): Developed a secure platform through which victims of online harassment can anonymously report abuse, aggregating fragmented data from multiple sources to provide a clear picture to authorities and prosecutors.
- Romania (Finalist – LUMEN Project): The Romanian-American University’s solution dedicated to identifying coordinated manipulative behaviors on social media, maintaining a strict balance between data protection and transparency.
- France (Finalist – Bulle Project): Created a depolarization algorithm designed to break “opinion bubbles” on social networks by highlighting nuances and internal disagreements within users’ own opinion camps.
- Republic of Moldova (Finalist – ALL FOR ONE / AgnoSpeech Project): Proposed a local tool that completely removes personal identification data and stylometric fingerprints from hate messages before they are processed by analysis models, protecting user privacy.
Impact at the European Level
The LUMEN project is modularly designed to be rapidly expanded and implemented across all 46 member states of the Council of Europe, providing citizens, journalists, and institutions with official statistical reports on online manipulation campaigns.
Through its performance in Strasbourg, the Romanian-American University team demonstrates that Romania is at the forefront of technological innovation with social impact, developing concrete solutions that protect freedom of expression and consolidate democratic values in the digital space.
Photo Gallery
Photo source: https://www.coe.int/en/web/new-democratic-pact-for-europe/2026-hackathon
