HO:PE Training in Madrid Equips Spanish Jewish Community Professionals to Counter Online Antisemitism

From 5 to 6 June, Hannah Maman, Project Manager at the World Jewish Congress's Technology and Human Rights Institute (TecHRI), led a two-day training session in Madrid as part of Hate Online: Preparedness and Empowerment (HO:PE), an EU-funded initiative aimed at strengthening community capacity to address online antisemitism.

The training brought together professionals working across Spanish Jewish community organisations to examine how antisemitic content circulates on digital platforms and to build practical routines for identifying, reporting and responding to it.

The sessions combined conceptual and hands-on elements. Participants worked through how online hate speech operates in practice, including the distinction between illegal content and content that is harmful but lawful, and the difficulties created by inconsistent enforcement and limited transparency on the part of platforms.

A central component of the training addressed the structural reasons online antisemitism goes underreported: reporting mechanisms that are difficult to use, weak accountability for outcomes, and the absence of any feedback loop for the user who submits a report. Against that backdrop, Maman introduced the HO:PE tool, demonstrating how the browser extension and mobile application allow community members to submit reports through a single channel and how community representatives can then access, review and act on the resulting data.

Through case studies drawn from real content, participants assessed how individual posts might be categorised, whether they would be likely to be removed under existing platform guidelines, and how context shapes moderation decisions.

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