Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

Society is not ready for an AI world: any platform that does not guarantee anonymity will be of limited utility for social discourse in a world lurching towards authoritarianism, and any platform that does guarantee anonymity can no longer reliably distinguish human from ai; not that that should matter when it's ideas that are being debated.

But the bigger issue is the control of money: hierarchical institutions disintermediate workers from the way the fruits of their labor are put to use. Money spent or paid in taxes is aggregated and misused by third parties against the wishes and against the providers of that money. Essentially, your labor is used against you. This is true regardless of where someone is on the political spectrum.

A platform for debate or voting isn't going to resolve this fundamental problem.

What are some strategies a platform like this can take against spam or influence bots? Tying real life identities to users would certainly limit that(though identity theft and account selling could still happen), but that adds friction to joining, poses security risks, and many people might feel less comfortable putting their opinions openly online where backlash could impact real life.

The x.com/twitter "Community Notes" feature is based on this algorithm, BTW.

(Disclaimer: I'm on the board of the org that runs Polis.)

Man the name really threw me for a minute. Polis is the correct spelling for police in my native Swedish and I got through the first 2 paragraphs wondering what any of this has to do with law enforcement.

Then it dawned on me.

Edit to add: I think the white and blue theme helps. Those are police colours in Sweden...

Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? That seems to be a pretty big problem in many places.

I think I can find some common ground with people who have different views on corporate taxation if we both go over some data and economics and think about it and consider various tradeoffs. Especially if we chat face to face to avoid any 'keyboard warrior' effects.

I probably can't find much common ground with people that believe that condensed water vapor formed by the passage of airplanes is actually a mind control device from the planet Zargon.

This is incredibly cool tech built on an idea of participatory, consensus-building democracy that I want to believe is possible and sustainable.

More at https://compdemocracy.org/ and source code at https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis.

Are there any details on how they managed organised bad actors?

The moderation stuff seems targeted mostly on keeping a lid on trolls and tempers.

The Taiwan experiments were pretty interesting! for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/27/taiwan-civic-h...

How does it defend against corruption by the folks operating it? I'm especially thinking of biased seed statements, source bias, and burial of important items in irrelevant gublish.

These are the genre of consensus tools I would like to see used in SM. Just imagine: a system that actually helps people exchange atomic, clear arguments and come to an informed consensus.

The internet could have really been a great tool to bring humanity together, if it was structured in that way for the common good. Instead we get SM where mud-battles and the resulting polarization are part of the perverse business model: engagement drives revenue, and there's no better way to keep people engaged than with a loop of extreme emotions and comments shouting the same shallow arguments at each other all over again without any meaningful progress.

Only imagine how quiet those platforms would become if discussions were actually structured for consensus instead of dissensus. I mean, yeah, a huge win for society - but a big loss of money, distraction and control for Elon, Zuckerberg and their BS billionaire friends.

> Building on a foundation of simple but solid statistical algorithms from a decade ago

I wonder what algorithms they are talking about? Can't find any papers referenced :(

Looking at the clustering code it looks like they are using kd-trees with knn. Old skool!

Damn you governor polish! /s

Jokes aside, this looks interesting. I have my doubts about the grandiosity of the claims re: helping entire "cities, states, or even countries find common ground on complex issues," but I'm somewhat captivated by the idea of using it for local issues in cities or small towns like mine.

Cool. Deploying ClawBot(s)... 3.. ?... 1

I don't understand the utility of this. Maybe it works for things like noise ordinances, but I can't imagine finding common ground with people who want me dead or imprisoned simply for existing.