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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

#61

Post by foxfoxx »

nonameiguess wrote: post #45

Feels a bit strange to use or at least not what I was expecting. I'm not sure having a "feed" the way it does is even appropriate, but assuming that's what it will be, so be it. The titles, however, read like headlines even under the "Policy" tab, and it isn't until clicking through that I can see the title of the bill in question and some brief description of it. I was expecting something more like a list of bills w…

So policy feeds are dynamic news headlines because no one really wants to click on or understands:

"Making further consolidated appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, and for other purposes."

This is similar to how most people don't want to read the raw source bill text which is why it's at the bottom. The reason policies aren't direct links to congress.gov is because I've spent more time than most on congress.gov and the federal register and on one wants to do that.

My first commit on this project was Feb 22, 2025 so I'm sure you're happy to find out there is plenty of "why" to my answers and that these are all my design decisions.

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

#62

Post by foxfoxx »

cyanydeez wrote: post #59

One would, naively assume, there's some skew that slowly happens between the source text and the social posts. In reality, the social posts no longer need to do anything but lie about whatever the title might mean.

Right and the goal with Govbase is to show that disconnect in plain view. Hold representatives accountable to their actions against their words having them right next to each other.

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

#63

Post by gwerbin »

foxfoxx wrote: post #57
waterproof wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Why chase engagement? If policy is slow-moving then people can visit weekly. Or make an RSS feed. Unless you're planning to go ad monetized or worse...

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

#64

Post by gwerbin »

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.

That's the same kind of non-balance you see in human-authored news all the time, to be fair.

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

#67

Post by abangser »

Hey nice site. The Ledge (https://the-ledge.ai) is a site I developed over the past year with more of a focus on bill content. Ultimately I found it useful to use all three LLM (Gemini, Claude, OpenAi) to ingest and dissect bill text en route to producing useful reports. Especially challenging for bills that run 1000+ pages.

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

#68

Post by rgeers »

gwerbin wrote: post #63
foxfoxx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Why chase engagement? If policy is slow-moving then people can visit weekly. Or make an RSS feed. Unless you're planning to go ad monetized or worse...

There's nuance between wanting to build something people use regularly vs "chasing engagement". Even if he decides to run this as a non-profit, individuals are more likely to donate to something they use regularly and institutions are more likely to fund something with active usage. I would assume that the costs to make all these LLM-API costs are not insignificant. I agree with the previous comment that the policy is the differentiator though and hopefully there's a way to drive usage without devolving into a just another news aggregator.

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

#69

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

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…

Could you expand out the Examples section to print the output? Would give me a better at-a-glance of what I could expect from the library.

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

#70

Post by usernomdeguerre »

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.

It also seems rather off base on the sentiment analysis as well.

>"We are on day three of President Trump's military operation in Iran. It's the most courageous military decision of my lifetime, and we are kicking a*. The United States military and the Israeli military, working in tandem, are kicking the hell out of the Iranian government. How is Iran planning to fight back? They have friends. They're counting on pathetic, mewling Europeans and the ridiculous, sad sack Democrats who just hate Trump and don't care about America winning."

This was marked Right:Neutral

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