Pol.is

Last updated
Polis
Developer(s) The Computational Democracy Project - a 501(c)3 nonprofit
Repository
License AGPLv3 (open-source)
Website https://pol.is

Polis (or Pol.is) is wiki survey software designed to get large groups of people to collaborate. [1] An example of a civic technology, Polis allows people to share their opinions and ideas, and its algorithm is intended to elevate ideas that can facilitate consensus decision-making. [2]

Contents

Polis has been credited for assisting the passage of legislation in Taiwan. [2] [3] Polis has also been used in America, Canada, and Singapore. [4]

Colin Megill is one of the cofounders of Pol.is along with Christopher Small and Michael Bjorkegren who built it after Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. [4]

Taiwan

vTaiwan

vTaiwan has used pol.is as "one of the key parts" of its suite of open-source tools in its citizen engagement efforts. [5] vTaiwan claims that of the 26 national issues related to technology were discussed on the platform and 80% led to government action. [4] [5]

Join

Pol.is is also utilized by "Join," a national platform for online deliberation run by the Tiwanese government. [6] [7] By 2018, "Join" had 5 million users, more than vTaiwan had up until that point. [5] Megill credits Tang and CL Kao, a cofounder of g0v, with convincing him to open-source pol.is. [8]

Reception

Andrew Leonard describes Pol.is as being intended as an antidote to the divisiveness of traditional internet discourse. [8] Audrey Tang agreed saying, "Polis is quite well known in that it's a kind of social media that instead of polarizing people to drive so called engagement or addiction or attention, it automatically drives bridge making narratives and statements. So only the ideas that speak to both sides or to multiple sides will gain prominence in Polis." [9]

Carl Miller praised the technology as having "gamified finding consensus." [10]

Darshana Narayanan, in an op-ed in the Economist, argues that open-source machine-learning-based tools like Polis can help to bypass the influence of special interests or experts. [11]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Soper, Tyler (April 17, 2014). "Startup Spotlight: Pol.is uses machine learning, data visualization to help large groups spur conversation". GeekWire .
  2. 1 2 Miller, Carl (2020-09-27). "How Taiwan's 'civic hackers' helped find a new way to run the country". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2024-02-27.
  3. ↑ Miller, Carl (November 26, 2019). "Taiwan is making democracy work again. It's time we paid attention". Wired UK. ISSN   1357-0978 . Retrieved 2024-02-27.
  4. 1 2 3 Narayanan, Darshana (March 22, 2019). "Opinion: Technology and political will can create better governance". The Economist . ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 2024-05-04.
  5. 1 2 3 Horton, Chris (August 21, 2018). "The simple but ingenious system Taiwan uses to crowdsource its laws". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2024-02-27.
  6. ↑ Tang, Audrey (2019-10-15). "Opinion | A Strong Democracy Is a Digital Democracy". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-05-04.
  7. ↑ Tang, Audrey (March 12, 2019). "Opinion: Inside Taiwan's new digital democracy". The Economist. ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 2024-05-04.
  8. 1 2 Leonard, Andrew (July 30, 2020). "How Taiwan's Unlikely Digital Minister Hacked the Pandemic". Wired. ISSN   1059-1028 . Retrieved 2024-05-04.
  9. ↑ Richman, Josh (2024-02-27). "Podcast Episode: Open Source Beats Authoritarianism". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 2024-07-14. Polis is quite well known in that it's a kind of social media that instead of polarizing people to drive so called engagement or addiction or attention, it automatically drives bridge making narratives and statements. So only the ideas that speak to both sides or to multiple sides will gain prominence in Polis. And then the algorithm surfaces to the top so that people understand, oh, despite our seeming differences that were magnified by mainstream and other antisocial media, there are common grounds...
  10. ↑ Miller, Carl (2019-10-25). "Crossing Divides: How a social network could save democracy from deadlock". BBC. Retrieved 2024-07-06.
  11. ↑ Narayanan, Darshana (March 22, 2019). "Opinion: Technology and political will can create better governance". The Economist . ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 2024-05-04.
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