Rama says social media distorted Albania protests

Prime Minister Edi Rama has said Albania’s month-long “Flamingo Revolution” protests carry a message his government must hear, but warned that social media distorted how they were seen.

Speaking at the Ruhr Summit in North Rhine-Westphalia, Rama said he was not judging the protests by crowd size or hashtags, but by the concerns and anger that brought people into the street.

He said the protest then entered a system of digital amplification, where emotion spread faster than context.

Rama said the problem was not the protesters, but the way online platforms turned political anger into a larger and more polarised version of reality.

He warned that democracies had still not found a way to separate freedom of speech from the power of online reach.