Walid Al-Saqaf

Activist, Educator/Teacher, Entrepreneur, Muslim, Project manager, Scientist, Student, Technologist, Web guru

Walid Al-Saqaf is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at Södertörn University, with a diverse background in computer engineering, journalism, and media technology. His interdisciplinary research focuses on areas such as data journalism, digital verification, fact-checking, disinformation, and blockchain technology. With over eight years of experience as a journalist, including a senior role at the Wall Street Journal, Al-Saqaf brings practical insights to his academic work. He has developed tools like Mecodify for analyzing Twitter data and has been actively involved in projects related to Internet censorship and censorship circumvention technology, particularly during the Arab Spring. Additionally, Al-Saqaf is engaged in non-commercial use of ICTs, democracy, and development, holding positions in organizations like the Internet Society. His expertise extends to areas such as social media, social network analysis, and initiatives to improve Internet services and access in regions like Yemen.

Promoting Freedom of Expression, Democracy, particularly through creative technological innovations.

Give people in developing countries the means to liberate themselves from oppression. Those tools need not to be only materialistic, but could be in the form of training, education, communicating their messages across and even moral encouragement. One way to do that for countries suffering from Internet censorship of political content is by providing them the means to bypass this censorship and supporting initiatives -home-grown ones in particular- to spread the word about such solutions and allow experts to train and education people in the country to use those tools. Furthermore, the most crucial way to get to know what people need is through 'communication'. This key word is of vital importance because only then will we understand what they need and not impose solutions that may not work for -or may not be needed by- them. Bridging the digital divide between the North and South should be a priority for those who could make a difference. It is such a noble cause!

.Net software development, Activism, Communication strategies, Data analysis, Human rights, Internet applications, IP networking, Job skills development + training, Journalism, Misinformation awareness, Policy advocacy

As a journalist with a background in computer software development, I started developing an online news aggregator for my own country Yemen, which named YemnePortal.net. The moment the website went live, my life changed in many ways. I became more attached to online journalism, more aware of the vast potentials of the Internet in delivering news, and subject to government scrutiny for the content on my website. Upon the blocking of YemenPortal.net by the Yemeni government, I moved in full thrust to developing circumvention solutions to bypass Internet censorship, the latest being alkasir (currently in its 1.2.0 version). I introduced a concept I like to call 'split-tunneling' to save bandwidth while still serving the purpose of allowing people to visit blocked content with ease. I am currently involved in activism to support freedom of expression online as well as doing research (PhD) on Internet censorship overall. TED is definitely going to make my journey ever more excitin

Online Trading (manual) Programming in MT4 (metaquotes language) to write automating trading robots (I even participated in championships in the past :))