Digital Affairs – Chancellery
of the Prime Minister

The project – appeals against the decisions made by the website administrators – is the first project submitted to the prestigious ITU WISIS Prizes competition, which was created in cooperation with the government administration and one of the largest social networking platforms.

With your votes, we have a shot at winning the competition.

“We have been participating in the competition organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) since 2014. In 2018, we even managed to win with the National Educational Network project, which was recognised as the best project in the world in its respective category,” reminded Wanda Buk, Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs. “This year’s edition is particularly important for us,” she added.

This time, our submission concerns a project that is the first of its kind in the world.

The service, which was submitted to the WSIS Prizes 2020 competition, was launched in December 2018. It offers users a recourse to verify Facebook’s decisions concerning account suspensions and deletion of posts due to their indecent character. The decision to restore the content, profile or page is made independently by Facebook, on the basis of its Community Standards.

“We have built this service on the premise that freedom of speech is crucial for the development of the society, and enabling every person to express themselves freely is a positive force that increases the diversity of ideas shared by people in public discourse,” said Marek Zagórski, Minister of Digital Affairs. “Achieving a balance between these values and ensuring the safety of users is an extremely difficult and constantly evolving challenge,” he added.

As of the project submission date (29.11.2019), there were more than 1100 requests, around 35% of which resulted in restoring the deleted content.

You can find more information about the service on the service page: Appeal from a website’s decision.

Each of you can contribute to our victory. All you have to do is vote for our project by next Friday (24 January) . How to do this? Here is a short guide – it just sounds complicated, but in reality it’s easy and only takes a few minutes:

Step 1: Go to: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/stocktaking/Account/Login and then select “Register a new user.”

Step 2: Fill in the data fields truthfully. 

• Select “Other” in “Stakeholder Type” field;
• Enter “None” in the “Organization Name” field.

Your password should contain at least one uppercase letter, a number and a special character. Follow the instructions and open an e-mail message with an activation link sent to your inbox. Do not close your browser after logging into your WSIS Prizes account.

Step 3: Open this website in a new tab: https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/stocktaking/prizes/2020/

Step 4: Select “Get Started” and then click on “Voting Form.”

The following page lists 20 projects in the first category – C1.  You may cast 18 effective votes, one in each category.

You may also vote only for the projects that you find interesting – in order to do so, navigate the website using the category selection field, which you can find directly above the project list.

Please note: Our project was submitted in category C7: E-Government, and you will find it under the name Social Media Point of Contact – Facebook and Government. 

That’s all. Thank you for your votes!