Revontulet

We are excited to be spending this week at Oslo Innovation Week, which gathers startups, investors and others from the innovation ecosystem in our hometown of Oslo for a fantastic lineup of events. Our vision at Revontulet is a safer world for all. On the path towards this innovation is key. While we continuously research and develop innovative solutions to safety challenges, we are proud to be part of a larger ecosystem of actors working for a less hateful world. We are therefore excited to join friends and partners in organising the session “Innovation Against Hate” on Thursday, 23rd October 2025, from 4.30-7.30 pm.

💻 Protecting the Next Generation in a Digital World 🌍 Today’s youth are growing up in a world that’s more connected and more vulnerable than ever before. Over 80% of young people report feeling unsafe or exposed online. Deepfakes, harassment, and exploitation have become everyday realities. This is not a distant threat. It’s here, affecting our children, our peers, our communities. The Netflix documentary Adolescence brought this issue to light with haunting clarity and it’s why Innovation Against Hate at Oslo Innovation Week 2025 is an event not to be missed.  This crucial session is brought to life by Astrid Sundberg and Stine Rebekka Aksnes, and co-curated by Sofie Staal, following the impactful spring edition that brought new urgency and voices into this vital conversation. At this event, we’ll hear from people with lived experience, experts, and changemakers who are working every day to make digital life safer and more inclusive. 🎤 Speakers include: Mia Landsem | Bjørn Ihler | Warsame Ali | Eirik Norman Hansen | Hege Tokerud | Sofie Staal | Meriam Stensholt | Ingrid Stolpestad | Ida Faldbakken | Astrid Sundberg 📍 Hosted at House of Consciousness (HOC) together Boitano AS and Wrixit in collaboration with: Amnesty International, Women in Tech Norway, Nordic Women in Tech Awards, Revontulet, Stiftelsen Flexid, Aiba - Safe Digital Lives, 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐤𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐭. At Women in Tech Norway, we believe that innovation must serve humanity. We invite our community especially those shaping the digital future to take part in this vital conversation. Let’s build technology that protects, empowers, and uplifts. 💪 📝 𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐧𝐨𝐰: Registration link (https://lnkd.in/d2JvYrm4) 🔗 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐬: OIW Event Page (https://lnkd.in/dmxUEu-K)

We are incredibly proud to be recognized by Startuplab and DNB as one of the top 50 in 100 Pitches 2025 - Norway’s largest pitching competition for investor-ready startups! #oiw2025 #dnbnxt #startuplab We'll see you at Oslo Innovation Week!

The world of counterterrorism and countering extremism is undergoing unprecedented changes. One of the most significant pitfalls in addressing any threat is falling into the trappings of defining your enemies based on your own ideological biases. That is perhaps especially true when it comes to highly politicised threat areas, such as extremism, terrorism, and mass casualty violence. Last week saw much politicised discourse on how extremist threats across the spectrum are perceived and quantified. - President Trump designated Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organisation." - CSIS (the Centre for Strategic and International Studies) released a report announcing that left-wing extremism was on the rise, and that attacks from the far left for the first time in 30 years outnumbered those from the far right. - The Heritage Foundation, along with its spin-off, the Oversight Project, has called on the FBI to add "Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism" to its list of domestic extremist groups, building on familiar rhetoric from across the right. All of these actions lead to a distorted public image of the realities of the threats facing both Americans and the world. At Revontulet, we are aware of the implications of a biased worldview when assessing threats. We therefore work consciously and consistently to continuously evaluate and understand our own biases and develop methodologies to mitigate these. By continuing to fight for our independence and integrity, we aim to prevent the strategic blind spots that come with politically motivated attempts to undermine evidence-based data and the credibility of our field. This is vital as we continue to strive towards our stated mission of creating a safer world for all. Read more about the recent developments and our approach in the article linked below.

A quiet, bespectacled teenage boy arrives at school dressed in black. He skips his morning classes. At lunchtime, he slips into the bathroom, carves into his forehead with a blade, scrawls blood-red graffiti on the walls, and prepares his weapons. Fifteen minutes later, he enters a classroom and unleashes staggering violence. He stabs one girl 57 times, killing her. He injures three others. He stops only after a school IT technician strikes him with a chair and corners him. Minutes later, he drops the knife, utters "What have I done?" and is arrested without resistance. This could have been any number of school attacks from the past two decades. But the case of Justin P., a minor and student at a Nantes lycée, deserves special scrutiny not because of its brutality, but because of the fundamental flaws in how law enforcement, the media, and the general public are framing his motivation. In the days after the attack, French newspapers, including Le Monde and BFMTV, focused almost exclusively on his affinity for Hitler and Mein Kampf. However, the 16-year-old’s manifesto contained no references to Nazism, racial theories, or antisemitism. Historically, terrorist manifestos are ideologically coherent documents that justify violence, publicize grievances, inspire imitators, and immortalize the perpetrator. Justin P.'s L'action immunitaire exemplifies the recent shift towards fringe fluidity fueled by nihilism. It reveals more about his psychological state than his political vision. Eco-extremist rhetoric — claims about "globalized ecocide" and society as a "tumor" — wasn't connected to any specific political program. When he entered the classroom, he didn't target symbols of environmental destruction. Justin P.’s complex presentation—combining ideological rhetoric, shocking aesthetics, and nihilistic admiration for spectacular violence—exemplifies the kind of hybrid phenomenon that traditional frameworks struggle to classify, that Revontulet is mapping with greater clarity. In an age of ideological incoherence, we need analytical tools that help us make sense of the chaos and identify patterns and connections that traditional taxonomies miss. Only then can we hope to develop more effective strategies for preventing the next Justin P. from translating incoherent rage into devastating violence. Read our full insight on the Nantes School stabbing on the link in the first comment.

We're thrilled to share some of our work on toxic narratives on TikTok and X in the city of Malmö from a study we conducted last year. For us, this project provided an exciting opportunity to further explore the local Nordic information environment and the local dynamics of polarization and toxicity and their impact on local communities, social cohesion, and democracy in our home region. Link to our full post in the first comment.

The Revontulet team is heartbroken by the attack on the Lapu Lapu festival and the Filipino community of Vancouver. Our thoughts are with the community. We will continue our efforts to monitor the event and all hate-based attacks against communities in Canada. https://lnkd.in/d4c54rSc

Election Watch by Digital Public Square is a series of reports based on our ongoing monitoring of online narratives promoting extremism, violence, and polarization amid the upcoming Canadian federal election. As election day in Canada approaches, I am excited that we at Revontulet have the privilege of collaborating with Digital Public Square on this series. Check out the latest entry on Indophiba here: https://lnkd.in/dPC3xY7J You can also subscribe to the Digital Public Square substack here: https://lnkd.in/d_4TbWMZ

What toxic narratives shape the online conversation in and about Malmö on TikTok and X?   We continue our pursuit to get new insights on polarization on social media.   Together with Malmö stad and Revontulet, we have analyzed over 10,000 videos and tweets from June 2023 to May 2024 to understand which toxic narratives are dominant, how they move across the platform narratives and what methods are used to amplify the narratives. Here’s what we found: 🔹 Different toxic narratives in different languages: In Swedish, the dominant toxic narratives was the Great Replacement theory, fears of Islamization, and criticism of the Social Democrats for creating a “haven for terrorists.” In Arabic, the dominat toxic narratives was on Islamophobia in Sweden, with recurring themes of Koran burnings, child abduction (LVU-campaign), and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 🔹 Online and offline behaviors are interconnected: Real-world events shape online discussions, fueling toxic narratives. At the same time, online discourse can influence actions in the physical world. 🔹 Superspreaders drive polarization: A small group of influential individuals and organizations play a key role in amplifying toxic narratives, shaping public debate on TikTok and X. Three years ago, we launched the Safe Digital City initiative in Malmö. Since then, the city has been at the forefront of digital security efforts now with analysis of facebook, Tiktok, Flashback and X.   This report marks the next step—now, the crucial work of translating insights into action begins. Listen to the deputy mayor of Malmö stad Amani Loubani talk about the analysis on Sveriges Radio: https://lnkd.in/dcxdQW38 Read more about the analysis here: https://lnkd.in/dG_2zMGQ #NordicSafeCities #SafeDigitalCity #democracy #toxic #narratives #polarization