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Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

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Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#51

Post by bc569a80a344f9c »

LPisGood wrote: post #43
jrussino wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm too software-engineer-brained now, but to me it seems like lawmakers should just be using a tool like git directly. The legal code is a codebase, every bill is a PR, the arguments and proposed changes are captured in review comments, and the PR is accepted/rejected on a vote. Aside from "lawmakers don't/won't understand the tool", why not do it this way?

I think they pretty much do, it’s just not recorded as such in an easily retrievable format.

From what I understand, it depends on the stage. The United States Code certainly tracks any and all amendments, and you can fully trace which member introduced which amendment, when and where it passed, and even verbatim floor debate.

However, the draft stage isn't documented this way. Members negotiate whatever between themselves (well, really their staffers) and this happens over email, in discussions, via Word documents - whatever works.

I guess in the git metaphor, drafts are in flux while being worked on as a commit, and are squashed and then accessible as such squashed commits once initially introduced or whenever they lead to bill amendments. You can't necessarily track down what member was responsible for a specific sentence in an amendment.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#52

Post by some_random »

Overall I love it, my biggest critisism so far is that the impact score seems overly opinionated and overly broad in some cases. For example, https://govbase.com/policy/fr-2026-03380 lists on the policy page as positively affecting "Snap Food Stamps" which doesn't seem to be relevant although I don't have pro to see the reasoning.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#53

Post by LPisGood »

bc569a80a344f9c wrote: post #51
LPisGood wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they pretty much do, it’s just not recorded as such in an easily retrievable format.

From what I understand, it depends on the stage. The United States Code certainly tracks any and all amendments, and you can fully trace which member introduced which amendment, when and where it passed, and even verbatim floor debate. However, the draft stage isn't documented this way. Members negotiate whatever between themselves (well, really their staffers) and this happens over email, in discussions, via Word do…

The thing is that there is a voting process eventually so it can at least in principle be known which version is proposed by which legislator, or which committee.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#54

Post by stonogo »

1shooner wrote: post #39
healsdata wrote: post #16

The current summary on the home page contains bias / one-sided reporting. > While the administration describes the strikes as a necessary move to stop nuclear weapons, the conflict has already seen accidental friendly fire and threats of a ground invasion. The balance to the assertion "this was necessary" isn't "but there's been some consequences" -- it is an exploration of the truth of the assertion.

How are the consequences of war not germane to its necessity?

They are, of course, but there are two different consequences involved in this assessment. One is "stop nuclear weapons" (the converse would be "do not stop nuclear weapons") and the other is "friendly fire incidents" (the converse would be "no friendly fire incidents"). Neither are directly related to the other, since the former is specific to this engagement and the latter happens in any combat.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#56

Post by wizzwizz4 »

verdverm wrote: post #22
sourcegrift wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad news is that bluesky is on a decline while truth social is increasing. https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2025/11/07/bluesky-... I wonder what will happen to trans kids in the coming years. Trans people shape the soul of the country (since the last 3 years)

It doesn't look like truth social has grown much the last year, sits around 10% of bluesky by active user count. Would be interesting to see more detailed metrics about the amount of content and engagement. Transgender has been a part of humanity forever, just like we see in other areas of nature. Here's some history going back 150+ years: https://translash.org/articles/drawn-to-history-10-trans-tra... Zine: https://…

And if you have a CPU at all, it's thanks in part to Lynn Conway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Conway

I expect it's worth looking into the ActivityPub Fediverse, or the applicable IndieWeb protocols (e.g. the linkback quartet: refback, trackback, pingback, and Webmention), to measure what people are saying. None of these have global feeds, though, so you have to deal with the conceptual complexity of measurement. (You have to deal with this anyway with Twitter, because of bot activity, but it's easier to deal with "this is an upper bound" than "this estimate may be too high or too low, and we'd have to investigate further in order to find out which".)

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#57

Post by foxfoxx »

waterproof wrote: post #47
foxfoxx wrote: post #34

For context, this is a solo project I've been building over the past year while working full-time. I've been responding as "we" in the comments since I got used to doing it other places lol Looking for feedback and advice. I'm an engineer, not a journalist or policy researcher, so a lot of this domain is still new to me despite working on it for a year.

Love the idea. Thoughts from a UI/UX point of view, on mobile: * Focus on the policy stuff since that's your differentiator. Put it front and center, currently it's below the "trending news". Nobody needs another trending news feed. I'd cut it entirely. * Make your differentiator hyper-obvious at a glance on the front page. Right now your above-the-fold is dominated by a wall of AI generated text. It should include a…

Thanks! I'll look into these UX/UI ideas. As for the news, it's front and center because I want Govbase to be a site/app people regularly visit and policy does move slow. Even when a bill is introduced it can take weeks for the actual text content of the bill to show up on congress.gov. Plus on weekends/recess the government doesn't move.

I am planning to bring out more of the impact highlights from the policies to see what's "trending" or what certain reps are working on but just plans for now.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#58

Post by foxfoxx »

scronkfinkle wrote: post #46

I've been working on the data processing side of legal text with https://www.wordstodata.com/ Your work seems more targeted at tracking the real world impact of the bill rather than the changes it makes to the legal code, but a feature on my roadmap is having bill data also be easily linkable to the votes of politicians so you can track the effect politicians have on the legal code per member. Do you plan to build a…

Yes! If you go to the engage tab you can look up some reps and the policies they're sponsoring but I plan on giving impact scores and where certain reps are focusing their time in the future.

Re: Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts

#60

Post by showerst »

LPisGood wrote: post #53
bc569a80a344f9c wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, it depends on the stage. The United States Code certainly tracks any and all amendments, and you can fully trace which member introduced which amendment, when and where it passed, and even verbatim floor debate. However, the draft stage isn't documented this way. Members negotiate whatever between themselves (well, really their staffers) and this happens over email, in discussions, via Word do…

The thing is that there is a voting process eventually so it can at least in principle be known which version is proposed by which legislator, or which committee.

The people behind changes aren't actually as attributable as it sounds though because amendment text gets collaborated on, so showerst might propose an amendment with the key parts of LPisGood's wishlist in it, and then the bill itself will die and then various parts will get cherry picked into an omnibus bill in 6 months anyway.
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