ALLIES

Aim

The ALLIES project aims to support micro and small Hosting Service Providers (HSP) in achieving compliance with the new requirements and obligations under the “Terrorist Content Online” (TCO) Regulation. This will be achieved through the creation of proper learning, training, experience sharing mechanisms as well as technical Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.

Background

Even though the number of terrorist attacks have remained approximately at the same level as the previous years (119 in 2020 and in 2019, 129 in 2018), there is a new factor that plays a pivotal role for the spread of violent extremism propaganda – the Internet. One of the most dangerous and trending types of misuse of the opportunities that the Internet offers in the field of public security has been proven to be the usage of social media and websites for dissemination of terrorist content.

Consequently, a step further was taken by the European Union on the matter by adopting a new Regulation, namely Regulation (EU) 2021/7845 (also known as the TCO Regulation) urging the implementation of specific protective measures. The TCO Regulation requires online hosting providers to remove any illegal terrorist content within one hour, after having received an official removal order.

Objectives

AWARENESS among micro and small HSPs for the TCO Regulation and its requirements
AI TOOL developed to support HSPs by implementing the TCO Regulation
TRAINING for HSPs concerning TCO Regulation content and the usage of the created AI tool
SAFE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT for experience sharing and reporting among HSPs

Repository Material

ALLIES Guides

ALLIES TCO Regulation Guidelines

This document explains the TCO Regulation and covers the regulation's scope, definitions (e.g., radicalisation, terrorist content), and responsibilities for hosting service providers (HSPs), including penalties for non-compliance and the need for cooperation between authorities and HSPs.

ALLIES Fundamental Rights and Review Guidelines

This document focuses on safeguarding fundamental rights, particularly freedom of expression, thought, conscience, and religion, in the context of the TCO Regulation. It emphasises the regulation's approach to balancing public safety with the protection of these rights.

ALLIES Research Outcomes

ALLIES Online Radicalisation, Extremism and Terrorism Report

ALLIES Training Material

The ALLIES Awareness & Training Platform is a dedicated resource for Hosting Service Providers (HSPs) to enhance their understanding and compliance with the TCO Regulation (EU 2021/784). This platform offers comprehensive training materials, awareness-raising content, and tools to support the effective detection and removal of illegal terrorist content online.

What You Will Find on the Platform

Multilingual Content: Available in three languages, with additional translations coming soon.

Interactive Training Modules: Four modules with videos, text, downloadable booklets, and quizzes to test your knowledge.

Awareness-Raising Resources: Access webinars, workshops, and curated external materials for further insights.

Search Functionality: Quickly find relevant content across the platform.

User-Friendly Navigation: Easily access modules, resources, and tools through a clear and intuitive interface.

ALLIES Awareness & Training Platform

ALLIES Training Platform Explanatory Video

ALLIES Training and Education Curricula

ALLIES Public Deliverables

ALLIES Training material and platform

ALLIES Project website, social media accounts and communication channels

ALLIES Dissemination and Communication Plan

ALLIES Exploitation Plan

ALLIES Final engagement and outreach report

ALLIES Publications

BIANCHI, S., MANCUSO, M., PATERNOSTER, C., KALPAKIS , G., TSIKRIKA , T., VROCHIDIS , S., KOZHUHAROVA , D., & JAEGER, B. (2023). Artificial Intelligence to Counter Cyber-Terrorism. International Conference on Cybersecurity and Cybercrime, 10, 12–20. https://doi.org/10.19107/CYBERCON.2023.02
Maria, P., Ferran, A. L., Anastasia, M., Alberto, G.-T., Jónsson, B. Þ., Josep Lluís, B.-G., Ilias, G., Stefanos, V., & Ioannis, K. (2024). Time-Quality Tradeoff of MuseHash Query Processing Performance. 30th International Conference on Multimedia Modeling (MMM), Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10226935
Kalpakis, G. et al. (2025). AI-Based Framework for Supporting Micro and Small Hosting Service Providers on the Report and Removal of Online Terrorist Content. In: Gkotsis, I., Kavallieros, D., Stoianov, N., Vrochidis, S., Diagourtas, D., Akhgar, B. (eds) Paradigms on Technology Development for Security Practitioners. Security Informatics and Law Enforcement. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62083-6_20
Jin, Y., Wanner, L., & Shvets, A. (2024). GPT-HateCheck: Can LLMs Write Better Functional Tests for Hate Speech Detection?. arXiv. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.15238.
Fortuna, P., Soler-Company, J., & Wanner, L. (2023). Dataset annotation in abusive language detection. In C. Strippel, S. Paasch-Colberg, M. Emmer, & J. Trebbe (Eds.), Challenges and perspectives of hate speech research (pp. 443–464). Digital Communication Research. https://doi.org/10.48541/dcr.v12.26
Jin, Y., Wanner, L., Kadam, V. L., & Shvets, A. (2023). Towards Weakly-Supervised Hate Speech Classification Across Datasets. arXiv. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.02637.
Stefanopoulos, D., Bozas, A., Christodoulou, G., Maslioukova, M., Kouloglou, Y., Pegia, M., Moumtzidou, A., Gialampoukidis, I., Avgerinakis, K., Vrochidis, S., & Kompatsiaris, I. (Yiannis) . (2024). Wildfire Detection for Emergency Responders using X. Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI), Reykjavik, Iceland. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12156017
Pegia, M. E. (2024). Multimodality in media retrieval. ICMR ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 International Conference on Multimedia Retrieval, 1219–1223. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652583.3657583
Pantelidis, N., Pegia, M., Galanopoulos, D., Apostolidis, K., Georgalis, D., Stavrothanasopoulos, K., Moumtzidou, A., Gkountakos, K., Gialampoukidis, I., Vrochidis, S., Mezaris, V., & Kompatsiaris, I. (n.d.). Verge: Simplifying video search for novice users. International Conference on Content-based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI 2024), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/cbmi62980.2024.10859248