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Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#61

Post by geniium »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

Yeah education is the root of our future. It's importance is often undervalued.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#62

Post by llccbb »

tptacek wrote: post #30

A category of applications that I'd like to see YC helping along are those things that could help ordinary people run for office. The things off the top of my head I can see technology helping with: * Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money. * Using techno…

You (and everyone here looking to engage their technological skills in the democratic process) should consider putting some time into the PROGRESSIVE CODERS NETWORK (ProgCode)[0]. They are a non-profit that helps organize and direct volunteer coders, programmers, designers into open-source political projects. They are about connecting and facilitating projects, not dictating what projects should be. They are party-neutral, but seek to empower the people and provide tools for running successful campaigns and being engaged as a citizen.

If you can take away the need for millions of dollars to run a campaign then policy makers aren't beholden to the few wealthy supporters that helped get them elected.

Many of your points are already being worked on and the projects would love more support and input.

[0]http://progcode.co

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#63

Post by tptacek »

Gargoyle wrote: post #45
tptacek wrote: post #30

A category of applications that I'd like to see YC helping along are those things that could help ordinary people run for office. The things off the top of my head I can see technology helping with: * Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money. * Using techno…

>I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run Do you plan to run yourself?

Nope. I have the wrong hair for it. But what I've learned in the past few weeks is that a suggestion to a friend that they run for office is almost always met favorably; it's a compliment, like "that's a nice jacket", so your worst case scenario is still a positive interaction, but your best case scenario is a small but real chance at changing the world. I'll take that bet any day.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#64

Post by pjc50 »

tptacek wrote: post #30

A category of applications that I'd like to see YC helping along are those things that could help ordinary people run for office. The things off the top of my head I can see technology helping with: * Leveraging social networking to generate social permission for people to stand for office, which I think is the most important obstacle facing people who might consider running --- far more so than money. * Using techno…

The UK startup https://www.mysociety.org/ is very active in this space.

e.g. https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ (Hansard prettified), https://www.writetothem.com/ (case study at https://www.mysociety.org/democracy/writetothem/ )

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#65

Post by tptacek »

davidw wrote: post #48
saosebastiao wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with. This is a huge frustration of mine. It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc. It would be awesome to have a social media platform that is dedicated to political communication…

I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost' of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100 people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you as much.

I know this to be the case. But then, that suggests to me that this is another place where tech has a chance to make a dent, not by short-circuiting the "proof of work", but by coordinating the effort so that people know how and when to put it in.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#66

Post by tptacek »

davidw wrote: post #48
saosebastiao wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Using technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with. This is a huge frustration of mine. It is nearly impossible to get the attention of politicians unless I'm willing to spend a vast amount of my time on the phone, because they don't pay attention to email, social media, etc. It would be awesome to have a social media platform that is dedicated to political communication…

I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost' of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100 people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you as much.

I know this to be the case. But then, that suggests to me that this is another place where tech has a chance to make a dent, not by short-circuiting the "proof of work", but by coordinating the effort so that people know how and when to put it in.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#67

Post by bduerst »

thowar2 wrote: post #34

Education should be on this list. The root of all these problems stem from a lack of effective education. 1) The current methods are highly ineffective for teaching By getting more effective at teaching children, and helping them to self educate, we get better informed citizens who can interpret news more accurately and effectively participate in democracy. 2) The current goals for education do not align with current…

Agreed - we're in the middle of an education bubble, as the growth in student loan debt has fast outstripped the growth in income for graduates.

As technological automation continues, there is demand for a system that is capable of retraining displaced workers, and doesn't create modern indentured servants in the process.

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#68

Post by EdwardCoffin »

I've been thinking about Robert's Rules of Order [1] for some time now, and the idea that it would be nice if it were updated for today's world of discussion forums, in which the interactions are more drawn out, rather than conducted with all participants active at the same time. I think it would be nice if there were a discussion forum that implemented some sort of policies that had been as well thought-out as Robert's rules.

What I was thinking is that some policies regarding responsibilities incurred by posting a comment in an asynchronous discussion forum are needed. For example, one should not be able to simply post a comment then leave the discussion. The persistence of their comment should be tied to whether they continue to participate, and respond to refutations and the like. Similarly, I see a lot of specious reasoning and appealing lies get posted, rapidly upvoted, but only eventually debunked: the people who upvoted should be notified of the refutation.

It would be nice if karma could actually be useful, and this always reminds me of PageRank [2]. Surely there must be some way to normalize the weights of highly-voted comments in less populated but serious subforums (like subreddits) so they are not overwhelmed by the karma granted to silly jokes in unserious but hugely populated frivolous subforums (again, I'm thinking of reddit here).

I think all of these things would do something to counter the fake news and echo chambers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

Re: Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

#70

Post by AlexC04 »

smileysteve wrote: post #52
AlexC04 wrote: post #49

One of my favorite "public good" websites is in the UK and called "theyworkforyou.com" The workflow is that you punch in your postcode and get a list of all the people who represent you. From house, senate, european parlaiment. You can then fill in a form and send a "constituent letter" to all the correct people for whom your opinion should have an impact. After a reasonable wiating period, a survey comes to your ema…

Check out the "Congress" app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightla...

That's really great - though I do think a web page is more inclusive. Additionally the phone-call aspect is something really cool which I hadn't thought of, but I believe the form would allow a letter to be posted directly to multiple representatives.

The return address would clearly indicate "I live in your constituency" while a phone call might not have that same impact.

I think there's also room to improve on the formula of TWFY like allowing an option for users to post their letters "openly" and allowing them to upload photos of the responses.

Though open-source on the congress APP makes it a really exceptionally cool foundation.

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