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Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy

• soheil 10y ago
  I wonder if Democracy has anything to do with the move to accept ACLU today.
• alva 10y ago
  Regarding the Fake News section and trust in media. I would love to see a tool or company that holds the mainstream news sources accountable. Over the last two days the major news sources have been pushing a blatantly false "truth" ("Muslim Ban"). Intention of this post is not to get into a political discussion of this! Every time I, as a heavy news consumer, see the BBC, NYT etc push a story which I know to be false or extremely misleading, I lose more and more trust. I value the benefits that the mainstream press provides (checking sources, editorial discretion etc), but as I see more and more fake or misleading stories, I lose trust. I think this is a common feeling across many in the West. edit: Could someone also clarify if these are intended for US only? I have a couple of ideas in mind for the UK which has a great amount of open source data regarding Gov. edit edit: Apologies for mods if my example has derailed this thread a bit. Just used an example fresh in our minds.
  • Kevin_S 10y ago
    I don't want to get too into this, but are you saying that calling the immigration order "Muslim Ban" is a false truth? I am really curious on why you think this?
    • alva 10y ago
      Yeah me either as it is off topic. But in response, it is not a ban on people of one religion entering the country. It is a ban on people from 7 terror prone countries entering. For the passing news consumer, it would be very easy to be led to believe that Muslims are banned from entering the US.
      • goodJobWalrus 10y ago
        Does the fact that Trump himself is calling it the "Muslim ban"change anything for you?
      • pgodzin 10y ago
        A ban on 7 Muslim-majority countries with exceptions for minority religions. In addition: "I’ll tell you the whole history of it: When he first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban,'" Giuliani said on Fox News. "He called me up, he said, ‘Put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.’" source: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316726-giuliani-trump-asked-me-how-to-do-a-muslim-ban-legally http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/316726-giuliani-t...
        • alva 10y ago
          Does any of that change the hard facts that what was enacted is not a ban on people coming to the US based on their religion. Because that is the pure fact.
          • kmnc 10y ago
            So we should just keep dismissing his obvious intentions because he hasn't fully executed on them at this precise moment? You can keep explaining away his actions based on technicalities all you want, but his intentions are clear to most people in the US and around the world.
            • alva 10y ago
              We should absolutely not be dismissing his seeming intentions. There should be massive focus on this. But that does not excuse conflating opinion/analysis with fact. Accurate reporting of the news is so tremendously important. Every single time that the mainstream media is called out for presenting opinion as fact, the public lose a tiny bit more faith in the veracity of the media. The Trump administration media strategy is so crystal clear I do not know why there is any confusing about what is going on. Every time a mainstream publication presents an analysis/opinion as fact, when it turns out Not to be true, Trump admin. calls them out on it and erodes trust further. This is their strategy. Keep the mainstream media falling into this trap and erode public confidence. I think the ONLY way to counteract this very effective strategy is to clearly separate the two. Report on the facts as they are. Also provide analysis and opinion that is clearly marked as such. This is so damn important, regardless of where you stand on the issue discussed.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • api 10y ago
    Determining truth is hard, and as you say the trouble is that everyone does propaganda. We are in a "fog of war" situation. Maybe a better approach would be to focus on ways of securely authenticating, signing, and delivering primary sensory data like photos, video, audio, and transcripts and doing so without interpretation.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      This would be very useful, giving how easy it is nowadays to forge things. It's still a huge risk if discovered - that's why I think it doesn't happen that often - but from the technical point, every other kid knows enough Photoshop to make a convincing fake these days. Another two things to focus on: - a better way to get an overview of a story and its evolution - something to collate news reports in order to easy see what's the current aggregate knowledge (trivial example: see how causalty rates tend to fluctuate for the first few hours/days of a disaster, and how the blame gets shifted around before appropriate investigations conclude) - a better way to follow redactions and corrections - it's too easy to read an outraging story that later turns out to be completely false, but to never get the memo that the story was invalidated
  • pgodzin 10y ago
    "Fake News" is completely making things up facts like "Trump punched the Pope today" for the sake of clicks. Calling recent actions as a "Muslim ban" is an interpretation of real events, including quotes by Rudy Giuliani and Flynn's son calling it a "Muslim ban" themselves. I would not consider it fake news, just an order executed with enough plausible deniability that they can prey on people's newfound obsession with fake news and call legitimate interpretations as such.
    • tptacek 10y ago
      Just to follow this up for people skimming: A high-profile author of the policy is on camera --- video you can easily find for yourself --- saying that they were tasked with devising a Muslim ban, and that he is proud of the legal chicanery they employed to make it "legal". This subthread, of course, an entirely off-topic divergence from the subject at hand.
      • alva 10y ago
        Yes you are right that he had done so. And if he had signed into law a ban people coming to the country based on their religion, then the papers plastering "Trump enacts Muslim Ban" would be accurate. But that is not the case.
        • pgodzin 10y ago
          When was the last time you saw a law that was in plain English saying exactly what it did such as "No more Muslim immigrants"? The intention was clear, putting it in such obvious terms makes it obviously unconstitutional, so the language puts a few restrictions that accomplishes it as well they could. Would you prefer if the headline was "Trump Wants Muslim Ban, Gets as Close as He Can"?
      • TeMPOraL 10y ago
        I think "Trump's Travel Ban may be the first step to implementing Muslim ban" would be a fair headline for the topic. I agree with 'alva that news reports should make a clear distinction between what is, what was meant by that, and what some people say it might be.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • davidw 10y ago
    It may not be 100%, precisely a Muslim ban, but that was its stated intent and this is about as close to that as they can get, it would seem. There are no valid security reasons for it.
  • random28345 10y ago
    > Over the last two days the major news sources have been pushing a blatantly false "truth" ("Muslim Ban"). Intention of this post is not to get into a political discussion of this! Well, if you're going to try to build a mechanism to hold the mainstream media accountable, you'll really need to create a standard on when a summarization is inaccurate. If the media was reporting on, "a ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries by a president who has promised his supporters a ban on Muslims" would that still be misleading? And if opponents of the ban called it a "Muslim ban", would media outlets be allowed to report on that fact? For the record, I've seen NYT and BBC call this a "travel ban", "Trump's ban" and in quotes designed to indicate attribution "'Muslim ban'". All of these seem reasonable and factual. Your thoughts? == EDIT == A headline that reads simply "muslim ban" shouldn't be considered fake news (in my opinion), so long as it provides a full explanation of the ban and who is affected. It is an editorializing title, but there's a massive difference between editorializing and fabrication. I believe calling something "fake news" should be reserved for publications that create falsehoods out of whole cloth. (e.g. "warehouse full of votes cast by illegal immigrants found")
    • alva 10y ago
      >"a ban on travelers from majority Muslim countries by a president who has promised his supporters a ban on Muslims" would that still be misleading? That would be a very accurate summary. Not misleading in the slightest. >" And if opponents of the ban called it a "Muslim ban", would media outlets be allowed to report on that fact?" Absolutely, but it should not be presented as fact that "Donald Trump has enacted a Muslim Ban". "People have described this as a Muslim Ban" is a fair representation. >For the record, I've seen NYT and BBC call this a "travel ban", "Trump's ban" and in quotes designed to indicate attribution "'Muslim ban'". All of these seem reasonable and factual That is far more responsible. However if you google news search Muslim Ban on the day it was announced, this is Not what the majority of news sources were doing.
      • AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        One minor nit. "A ban on travelers from certain majority Muslim countries..." would be accurate. As written, it implies every majority Muslim country is affected, which is not true. Of course, the more clarifications you add, the less it reads like a headline...
  • cazum 10y ago
    Without derailing too much here, can you point me to a non-op-ed story published by a mainstream news source that calls it a "Muslim ban"?
    • burkaman 10y ago
      I think this is the only relevant point here. For example, the Washington Post has only referred to it as a "travel ban". The phrase "Muslim ban" appears in opinion headlines, or a couple times when it is directly stated to be a quote. The New York Times uses "travel ban" and "immigration ban". It is newsworthy than members of congress and many organizations have called it a "Muslim ban" but news organizations are not directly using that phrase.
    • masonic 10y ago
      The Washington Post emailed a story ("News Alert Fri., Jan. 27, 2017 7:39 p.m.") that described the travel constraints as an unqualified "... 90-day halt to all entry from seven Muslim-majority countries". That's a flat lie, and it was eventually changed on the website.
  • mtgx 10y ago
    If only the mainstream media would stick to following these principles enumerated here, rather than blatantly taking sides (even when it's unnecessary for them to do so): https://www.popehat.com/2016/12/15/deserving-trust/ https://www.popehat.com/2016/12/15/deserving-trust/
  • protomyth 10y ago
    I was pretty disillusioned already, but the reporting on the Dakota Access Pipeline has been such a pack of lies, the state actually had to throw up a page to explains some if it[1][2]. I remember the old saying that the person who cleans up after the elephants has a whole different view of the circus. 1) http://ndresponse.gov/dakota-access-pipeline/myth-vs-fact http://ndresponse.gov/dakota-access-pipeline/myth-vs-fact 2) #15 is so beyond dumb, "wild buffalo", really? Plus, it underscores the poor reporting in that ranchers have lost livestock in the area.
  • Geekette 10y ago
    Nothing false about the example you cited. The architect of the ban, Rudy Giulani confirmed on air that the goal was to ban Muslims and his team's task was to create a legal mechanism for that to happen[1]. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/trump-asked-for-a-muslim-ban-giuliani-says-and-ordered-a-commission-to-do-it-legally/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/29/tr...
    • alva 10y ago
      It is totally false to say Trump has enacted a law to ban people from entering the US based on their religion. Totally false. Is it true that Rudy Giulani has said this. It also true Trump has said in the past he wants a Muslim ban. It is also true that many people believe this action is a step in the direction of a Muslim Ban. But this is not a Muslim Ban at this stage and presenting it as such is a lie and misleading. I agree that alarms should be going of all over the place in the mainstream news about this action and would encourage all of the opinion pieces to stress this could be a step towards a full Muslim Ban. That is for the Opinion pieces however.
      • volkadav 10y ago
        He's instituted a ban based on ethnic origin from countries that are majority-Muslim (for that reason), has in the past called for a Muslim ban, and the architect of the ban has said it's a Muslim ban. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and in a feat of amazing linguistic ability for a waterfowl looks you dead in the eye and says "I'M A DUCK!" what are we supposed to call it, a giraffe? To engage with pedantry for a moment, the ban may be more precisely an ethnicity or nationality one, but that's just as wholly unjust. Don't lose sight of the forest for the trees. The essential malfeasance here is bigotry written into law, the particular shade of that bigotry is immaterial.
        • alva 10y ago
          I think your analysis of the situation is likely correct and I condemn it. I still believe the mainstream news should Clearly separate the cold hard facts from analysis and opinion.
  • the_duke 10y ago
    Just a few days ago WaPo and NYT had articles like "OMG OMG entire state department leadership just quit! OMG". An hour later, those had all disappeared or were replaced, because they were actually just let go (their customary resignations were accepted). Trump will do a lot of damage to the US, but hysterical reporting with such a negative bias does not cast a good light on the US media, and is not the way to go.
• PaulHoule 10y ago
  If you're concerned about jobs and democracy, open an office in a swing state. The way the us electoral system is organized, every young educated person who moves from the heartland to California is a vote for Trump. Alternately find some way to get uneducated heartlanders to move to Fresno or something. Also it would help if you show just the smallest amount of empathy people in the U.S. who don't live in one of two half states. (i.e. people whose tax dollars benefit Stanford and the origin of Silicon Valley in defense contracting, people who buy your products, whose stock market investments make it possible for you to get rich, etc.)
  • protomyth 10y ago
    "uneducated heartlanders"?
    • ihsw 10y ago
      It should be clear from that term that the parent is hostile to anyone not buying into their progressive extremist ideology.
      • PaulHoule 10y ago
        I apologize.
    • ScottBurson 10y ago
      I'm going to pass along something my wife told me about, that happened when she was living in Idaho with her first husband. It was seriously suggested by some of the locals that she should undergo an exorcism. The evil spirit allegedly possessing her, that was to be the target of this procedure: her university education. There are lot of people in rural areas in the US who not only do not have a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it. One shouldn't let this observation degenerate into a stereotype, but I don't think one should dismiss it either.
      • protomyth 10y ago
• sethbannon 10y ago
  This is what business leadership looks like. Truly inspiring to see the corporate world embrace civic responsibility like this.
• tpetricek 10y ago
  I've been working on a project that makes data-driven reporting more transparent: https://thegamma.net https://thegamma.net, which might very well fit with the accountable news theme. Any feedback on how to make it better would be much appreciated :-).
• secfirstmd 10y ago
  Hmm, we applied with our non-profit tool, Umbrella App, for managing the physical and digital security of journalists and activists (https://www.secfirst.org https://www.secfirst.org) a few years ago when we were only getting started but didn't get in. It seems like it's needed now more than ever, so we might look at making another application to help bring us to the next stage of our development.
• grey-area 10y ago
  I think we need something a little more revolutionary for news than holding current news sources to account, or fact-checking tools. Most of the problems we see in our news outlets are around the competition for attention as the article says, but also around old business models for newspapers/tv which still haven't changed to adapt to a world in which anyone can report from anywhere live using a simple phone and anyone in the world could contribute to a story, if only they'd let them. Better something that encourages primary sources on the ground to contribute (video, text audio), and puts them in context chronologically, geographically and perhaps socially, but is not based on an advertising business model. Difficult to know what it could look like to but we need something fundamentally new which uses the internet not just as another medium.
  • CM30 10y ago
    It's an interesting idea, and one I've been thinking about for a while. Issue is, I think that's kind of what social media is meant for. Anyone can contribute news as a primary source and share it with others online via sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. So my worry is that any system like this would basically be just another social media service (albeit with a 'news slant' in the marketing material) and therefore be very difficult to promote. User created news is an idea that seems obvious and logical in theory, just very hard to promote in a world where it's competing with thousands of other services offering (in your user's eyes) very similar functionality.
    • grey-area 10y ago
      Yes sure, Twitter (moments) and fb (live) are converging on this to some extent. I'm thinking of something less social and more verifiable source of info though. You'd need incentives to keep it real, probably some form of verifying in a local web of trust, and incentives to read/watch so grouping by geography and interest. I'm thinking more make your own local newspaper than share videos to your friends. Probably you'd have to start in a niche like school news and expand out. Twitter is really interesting here because they are making and breaking news and being used as a broadcast medium in spite of huge failings for that use (spam, trolls), I think they're the closest thing but still a long way from something letting people publish verified info to the world in chunks bigger than a procrustean tweet.
• joshpadnick 10y ago
  I'm happily engaged in a DevOps startup and won't pursue this idea, but I proposed a new kind of news format shortly after the election at https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type-of-media-source-true-news https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type.... Personally, I'd love to be a consumer of something like this, or to know if there are startups working on this.
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    I'm unfortunately otherwise occupied at the moment so I won't be jumping on the occasion right now, but I favourited your comment for further reference. There's lots of good thoughts you put into that post, and I'd love to help - time allowing - if someone is going to take responsibility for making this happen. Thank you for writing that post!
  • RangerScience 10y ago
    Reading what you wrote... It almost seems like facts in news is a dependency management issue? I mean, it's going to be a way more complicated dependency situation than with code - imagine a fact determined by a study which had to make decisions about categories - but the gist remains: An interpretation of facts depends on those facts, some of which themselves are collections/transforms on facts, but ultimately, there's a physical reality from which they stem.
  • pouta 10y ago
    I am now running my own news startup (oko.ai) and have secured a deal with the biggest news agency in Portugal. And fact-checking is on our pipeline of features, thank you for the share. Also do you think we are in the right spot to go for this YC call?
• baron816 10y ago
  I think an important question to ask with regards to Democracy is "why do people believe the things they believe" or "how do they acquire their political beliefs?" The biggest influencers are likely 1) their family and 2) their friends. Essentially, they come from social interaction. People need a (fun) way to increase the number of real social interactions they have with other people. What's really dangerous right now is that many (including Liberals) are socially shunning those who don't share their political beliefs (or are not pure enough in their beliefs). Pushing people to the fringes of society will just force them to find a home in the most extreme among us. For a long time, Americans relied on social clubs that allowed people to engage in diverse political discussions but also build friendly relationships with others. I would like to see startups try to revive long lived, persistent social organizations that are aimed first at building a friendly community among its members and second at making people listen to different points of view.
  • drabiega 10y ago
    I don't think this is going to be possible until the basic arguments over what information sources are factual is resolved. Over the past decade I've seen the social structures that I grew up bifurcate because discussion between the two sides is basically impossible.
    • makomk 10y ago
      I don't think the basic arguments over facts are going to be resolved so long as people shun those who don't agree with them politically. Especially in the current social media climate, false claims spread like wildfire while the debunkings languish because people only spread or listen to stuff that supports their existing beliefs. My Twitter feed is probably typical for HN and I've been seeing this multiple times a day. There isn't even any media panic over it like the one over conservative "fake news" because it supports their existing beliefs too; often journalists are helping spread the claims on social media like everyone else.
• mtgx 10y ago
  For startups working on improving democracy, I'd suggest you start helping these three groups in any way you can: http://www.fairvote.org/ http://www.fairvote.org/ https://represent.us/ https://represent.us/ http://www.wolf-pac.com/ http://www.wolf-pac.com/ Creating a more fair representation in government that doesn't only involve the duopoly parties as well as getting money out politics should be the two main priorities before anything else. Unless these two things are fixed first, everything else will continue to be broken. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g
• moflome 10y ago
  @sama I'm heartened to see "Jobs" included in this list, but can you clarify whether this is a change in investment focus - will you be giving priority to startups which have greatest potential for job creation? If so, how would you qualify / prioritize those jobs (ie., part-time, full-time, educational requirements)?
• tptacek 10y ago
  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 technology to bypass the expensive outreach vectors traditional candidates are stuck with. * Informing constituencies and potential candidates about the local offices available to run for. * Crowdfunding campaigns with Kickstarter-like dynamics to make it safer to commit funds to speculative candidates. * Capturing the stories of people who have or are standing for election, so that we can all compare notes and see what the challenges (or lack thereof) are. * Building informal parties and coalitions of officeholders in states and major metro areas, to build tickets and slates of candidates around common ideals. * Building common platforms for constituent services, so that fresh new officeholders can outcompete incumbents both in responsiveness and in making their newfound influence available to their constituencies to pressure other parts of government. I've been calling my Senators about the Sessions nomination nonstop for the past 2 weeks and I've gotten calls through just 3 times. I haven't the slightest clue how to reach officeholders in my Chicago suburb. Clearly there's room for major innovation here. Incidentally, if you're building things like this, I'd love to help in any way I can. I'm easy to contact. I've set a goal for myself to get a specific number of friends and acquaintances to run, and I'm happy with the progress I've been able to make and pretty excited about the concept.
  • saosebastiao 10y ago
    > 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. And with ample features related to communicating about policy. Like for example: 1) The ability to search for a pending bill based on the text of the bill, highlight text, and comment directly on it. 2) The ability to +1 someone else's comments in a meaningful way. 3) The ability to publicly challenge a politician's claims through research, data citations, or other types of analysis. 4) The ability to find the appropriate politicians/appointees for a specific concern. 5) The ability to facilitate directional communication from politicians on specific issues. It would be great if a politician had a common platform to explain in detail why they voted yay/nay or abstained from voting for something, with quick crossreferences, data visualization, etc.
• cpursley 10y ago
  This is a great move by YC! I'd also love to see the "left behind" Americans addressed. There's a lot of people hurting in America who need training and jobs for the new economy and investment opportunity. I suggest opening YC branches in a former coal mining states and former manufacturing hubs in lake states. If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive politics.
  • pjmorris 10y ago
    > If folks can get their stability, hope and pride back, they'll be less likely to turn to fake news, placing blame on outsiders and divisive politics. Hear, hear, I think this is the key. Happy people tend toward stability for the societies they're in. I'm all for education, for anyone who wants it, as much as they want it (price and payer to be negotiated). That said, I suspect that education by itself will not fill the job supply-demand gap, nor that those educated jobs will be well-matched to the places where people live. And, if there's more to life than jobs, then maybe the jobs need to move to where people are, rather than making people move to where the jobs are. I think answers that will work will have to work for, say, everybody in the 'Rust Belt' as they are today, not as they might be if they jump through all the right hoops. For an example some people will dislike, a government run single payer health care system would take the financial burden off of employers as well as being cheaper for employees, supporting small business growth and entrepreneurship. Don't like that example? Fine. Bring on your favorites.
• thowar2 10y ago
  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 & future needs Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs. We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed.
  • tptacek 10y ago
    There's been a YC RFS for Education for a long time; it's #7 on the list. YC has had some success in the space with companies like Clever, and for awhile had a sister-program dedicated solely to K-12 startups.
    • adamnemecek 10y ago
      While nice, neither of these strikes me as truly disruptive. The downside is that to achieve the best educational environment, you'd have to open a school which doesn't scale nicely unless you plug into existing "world APIs". I guess you could start by opening a co-working space with a supervising adult (not teacher, this adult will be there to ensure that the kids aren't killing each other). There would be teachers accessible via video calls but most of the time would be spent reading or doing work, not passively listening/watching. If you pool these teachers together, you will be able to teach even the most obscure subjects. In this system, everyone is literally going at their pace. I think that fundamentally the main objection to this system is that some people learn better in a classroom setting, to which I reply: 21st century education needs to make a transition to turn graduates into self-learners. This can only be achieved with a system that fosters self-learning from very early on. It's not like you can create self-learners by making students go through a process that's fundamentally as anti-self-learning as possible. This will also make switching schools extremely painless. You will transition to a new desk. It's like a gym membership, you can totally have two if that's convenient for you for whatever reason.
• stevesearer 10y ago
  Regarding news, can someone please re-make the original concept of the fantastic news app Circa? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa_News https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circa_News
  • sparkzilla 10y ago
    So it can fail again?
• baursak 10y ago
  Democracy can be improved by having democracy in the workplace. Modern corporations are run like totalitarian, authoritarian regimes with top-down orders being barked down. If you disobey, you're out. People in Western democracies are no longer putting up with non-democratic control of their political institutions, but are completely oblivious to non-democratic control of their economic institutions and are perfectly willing to take orders where and when it matters most -- every day, 9 to 5. When employees can directly vote and democratically elect the CEO/CFO and other executive and managerial positions, across the wide range of industries and in majority of organizations, it will be a huge win for democracy, and that will spill into a much more engaged population politically as well. Also, at that point, employees are no longer employees.
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    You don't have democracy in the workplace because democracy is inefficient. A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together. We can tolerate authoritarian regimes in companies, because they're small (relative to countries) and compete in a heavily regulated space. If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace. Companies play thier game by selling stuff (and doing accounting magic). On the other hand, when two countries enter fierce competition, it's called "war". People on both sides end up dying. Even a less fierce competition ends up being miserable for everyone. The game has no bounds. And you can't easily quit it and move elsewhere. That's why we prefer countries to be run with inefficient democratic process - because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable.
    • baursak 10y ago
      > A company that expends great amount of money and resources on constant political shifting and backstabbing, and that can't present an unified vision on the market will soon get outcompeted by one that has its shit together. That already happens anyway. You don't need to have a democratically governed workplace for constant political shifting and backstabbing to occur. > If you want to leave or they fire you, you can generally find a new workplace. Which will also be non-democratically governed, so that doesn't work. > because too much efficiency in a country will make many, many people very miserable. Can't you make the same argument at organization level? I'm sure many Amazon warehouse workers would agree.
• maxxxxx 10y ago
  I am a little ambivalent about this. On the one hand the intent is probably good but on the other hand companies like YC and Silicon Valley are drivers of a lot of developments that led to the current situation. - Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards go disproportionally to a select few at the top - A lot of VC companies are killing a lot of previously relatively stable jobs. Uber is giving its drivers a job for a while but it's pretty clear this will not be sustainable and they will soon be out of a job again - The biggest companies like Facebook and Google are pretty much aiding "fake news" because in the end the only thing they care about is impressions and fake news sells better Don't want to be too negative but technology is not only a force for good but also causes problems for a lot of people. Maybe these people are looking at the wrong guy for solutions but their concerns are valid.
  • chipgap98 10y ago
    I don't think we can halt progress just because it negatively impacts some people. At the same time you are right that it is "not only a force for good" and there are things that can be done to mitigate that negativity. I think this is an appeal to entrepreneurs do to just that
    • dukeluke 10y ago
      When "progress" continually lowers wages of the lower class and concentrates power to fewer and fewer people, I think the way of doing things needs to be reevaluated.
      • ryanworl 10y ago
        Technology provides massive amounts of consumer surplus and deflation. What if we need less money and lower wages are actually fine? Edit: Do the people down-voting this actually think technology doesn't provide consumer surplus and deflation? Or do you have a problem with my question?
        • maxxxxx 10y ago
• alexc05 10y ago
  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 email asking if they replied and some other questions. Those "roll up" into a report on the member's responsiveness to their constituents. Of the times I used it when I lived there, I always got responsiveness and only once was the response rude / unsatisfactory. (a member of european parlaiment was a total dismissive jerk) Anyways - as far as ideas go, I think that would be a useful "start" - I also think there was more they could do to improve that further.
  • smileysteve 10y ago
    Check out the "Congress" app. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightlabs.android.congress https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightla...
    • alexc05 10y ago
      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.
  • DrScump 10y ago
    Check out https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org https://whoaremyrepresentatives.org
• alphonsegaston 10y ago
  The thing that is needed most is a laboratory of ideas for what will replace the neoliberal order. A corporate democracy that increases inequality and only panders to justice by gestures towards identity politics is seemingly over. What we're faced with now is either devolving into an Ethnic Nationalist state on par with Russia, or something entirely new that has yet to be described. What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms. We can do this. We have the majority of scientists, engineers, philosophers, and artists behind us. But we have to move quickly because returning to the kind of managed democracy we had before is no longer possible.
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > What needs to be recaptured is a vision of the future based on science, health, the arts, and shared prosperity. And it has to be described in actionable political terms. We need a Star Trek: TNG for the (pun not intended) next generation... If someone is willing to start a movement that wants to create United Fedration of Planets, count me in.
    • alphonsegaston 10y ago
      Right I agree. The command and control framework of the Star Trek universe will be unpalatable to American biases, so it would have to be something more networked along the lines of the federalism we already have. But given our technology, building a more directly democratic system of feedback should be possible. Trump's success is using Twitter to transform himself into a disruptive avatar of his supporters. The next generation of politicians has to do the same, but with democratic impulses as opposed to authoritarian ones. We also, as much as possible, must try evenly distribute the future. For example, if we want to defeat climate change, we have to rally manufacturing and technological solutions in places like the rural Midwest. In even the reddest of states, their are bastions of support for future-oriented ideas, and we should begin networking these places togehther as forward bases of operation.
      • 10y ago
• AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  About news: Back in the day, Groklaw did a phenomenal job covering the SCO v. world court cases (and, more broadly, the intersection of law and technology). It was run by a semi-anonymous paralegal who really cared about the cases, about the law, and about technology. ("Semi-anonymous", because her name was known, but it was a fairly common name, and her city and state were not known.) Groklaw became the source of authoritative reporting about the SCO cases. It had analysis from lawyers, paralegals, and technologists. It had (voluntary, amateur) reporters attending hearings and giving in-depth reports, and then thorough analysis from a wide variety of people. People cared enough to voluntarily take vacation days to go to the courthouse and attend hearings, and then spend the next 2+ hours writing it all up and posting it. People voluntarily gave money to keep it all going. It was amazing. It also was subject to significant attack, both from SCO and from trolls. It consumed the life of the paralegal running it for a decade. It was probably not sustainable. I think that moderation is essential for any online community that isn't going to fall to the lowest common denominator, but sustainability is an issue. (HN at least has multiple moderators, so hopefully they won't burn out.) For news, multiple reporters are needed (Groklaw didn't report on a hearing until multiple reports came in, because sometimes trolls sent in false reports.) I think the answer may be multiple small sites that each care about a focused area, and attract enough of a following that there are multiple reporters available when needed. (This probably won't work for something like foreign policy. I can attend a court hearing in my town and write up a report, but I can't get an interview with the Secretary of State and start asking uncomfortable questions.) This isn't really a firm idea, just some thoughts and observations...
• msrpotus 10y ago
  What about a new media organization focused on covering politics in a way that contributes to strengthening democracy? Is that something YC would be interested in? I'm exploring this idea and trying to figure out how to make it work.
• mjolk 10y ago
  > News: We’re facing two major issues with news. The first is fake news. The business model for online media rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth. This is insanely difficult as interpersonal trust is expensive and getting first-hand information/data is extremely non-trivial. I agree that "mainstream media" (quotes because that phrase makes my mouth taste like ash) has happily devolved into BuzzFeed-style clickbait, but another parrot of AP isn't progress. Paul Graham suggests that the best way to come into a good startup idea is to become the sort of person that has them, which I think applies to informing the public at large -- I don't think it's realistic to expect to build a revenue model off of people that will only give you their eyeballs for 20 minutes a day in the hopes of finding something to have an opinion on. I think this is a much larger, nearly intractable, problem of making societies into the types that are interested in nuance and dry detail.
  • sparkzilla 10y ago
    Paul Graham is right that it has to be something you want to do, but it is possible to build large new media sites on short attention spans -- if your site is designed for them. My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month). However, we most likely won't apply to YC this time, or ever again, due to Sam Altman's anti-Trump bias.
    • cadlin 10y ago
      No offense, but looking at your website, you've solved the problem of fake news by not showing any news. Unless you're talking about no bias in UFC news specifically.
      • sparkzilla 10y ago
        No offense taken. See my answer above.
    • mjolk 10y ago
      > My site, an actual working solution to the problem of both fake news and bias, is doing great (Over three million page views last month). How is crowd-funded media a solution to the problem of bias and factually unsound reporting? I found a link to your site from your profile and it appears to be a gossip and tabloid site with a focus on UFC.
• EdwardCoffin 10y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank
  • xgess 10y ago
    I've played in this space! A few years ago, I half-assed the world's worst startup for asynchronous political debating that focused more on identifying and understanding opinions as opposed to expression and dialog, because dialog necessarily breaks down to dichotomies and outgroup homogeneity which are exactly the problem. I never really figured out how to elevator-pitch the damn thing, but here are some blog posts I wrote back in the day: http://blog.agreethepeople.com/ http://blog.agreethepeople.com/ If you do follow that link, start at the bottom and work your way up. And let me know what you think!
• sparkzilla 10y ago
  Given Sam Altman's recent statements, will pro-Trump founders be discriminated against?
  • sparkzilla 10y ago
    It doesn't matter anyway. Even though I am building a social news search engine that aims to minimise bias and eliminates fake news, given @sama's statements I don't think there will a culture fit. So I'm not going to apply this time, or ever again.
    • TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > given @sama's statements I don't think there will a culture fit Could you summarise those differences?
      • sparkzilla 10y ago
        There are several issues, which overlap 1) Credibility: Altman's call to fix the fake new problem is ironic, because Altman's most recent statement [1] propagates the very fake news he decries. For example he refers to Trump's travel executive order as a "Muslim ban" and bases his thoughts on that false premise. 2) Woolly thinking: His statement that "most of them [Trump voters] voted for him for reasons other than the promise of a Muslim ban," is not only false because it's not a Muslim ban, but false because increasing security at the border was one of the main reasons they actually did vote for him, and the actions Trump has taken have high approval from his followers. 3) Being a smug liberal: See point 2. The idea that Trump voters are misled fools is a common theme of liberals. Altman is determined to try to show Trump supporters the error of their ways instead of making any attempt to understand their concerns. It's useful to note at this point that Trump flipped states that had been previously held by Obama. 4) Hypocrisy: Where was Altman when Obama was actually bombing Muslims? I know where he was -- organising a YC fundraiser for Obama [2] 5) Hyperbolic: I'm all for reasoned arguments, but his previous post [3] bordered on hysteria, saying Trump is "irresponsible in the way dictators are" and making outlandish comparisons to Hitler. 5) Poor business decision: It's surprising that Altman would damage his business by creating a culture of intolerance for founders who have political views from him. How must Trump supporting founders, employees and investors inside YC and beyond feel when Altman claims the moral high ground? 6) Emotional: When emotion takes over business, business fails. 7) Evasion: Despite numerous requests Altman has not clarified his position regarding the status of pro-Trump founders. Put all of these together and I just lost respect. I thought he was smarter. And I certainly I don't feel the need to justify my support for Trump to any investor. So, no, I don't think there's a culture fit. [1] http://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a-stand http://blog.samaltman.com/time-to-take-a-stand [2] http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama-fundraises-tech-stars-hollywood http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama-fundra... [3] http://blog.samaltman.com/trump http://blog.samaltman.com/trump
• CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
  If anyone wants a free idea for a "deal with fake news" startup: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16KzlIpxD7frAHsPM2Lt8ewE/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16Kzl... I literally do not have the time to build this, as I'm busy trying to make PHP secure. I just spitballed an idea and passed it along hackers who gave me feedback. I don't want to be contractually tied to VCs either. Just, if you like the idea, take it. Run with it. Make it successful. Use modern crypto. It's yours. Maybe see if the folks that run Snopes are interested?
  • notforgot 10y ago
    Hey, cool idea! We could add this to it: https://nochio.com/?kind=bad https://nochio.com/?kind=bad
• richcollins 10y ago
  Building tools for fact-checking and helping people decipher fact from fiction will become increasingly important to keep the electorate informed Sadly the electorate doesn't care about being informed. They seek out news that confirms their world view. Any information that contradicts their world view is deemed "fake news".
  • TeMPOraL 10y ago
    People usually believe what their friends believe - information is used to make social objects and ways of doing social signalling, not to get at hard facts. A lot of bullshit starts to fly around when you have two or more stable "positions" around a subject in a society. People divide into sides and keep using information only to signal to which side they belong. This leads me to (maybe a pretty dumb) idea: what if we found a way to destroy such stable positions? Destabilize them, so that people couldn't stubbornly signal their support for a single side? Of course all sides would end up using such a tool to destroy their "opponents"; I feel like this could lead to two outcomes: a) (bad) there aren't any stable positions anymore, and b) (good) the positions keep getting disrupted until they rearrange into one that is actually aligned with the facts.
• diminoten 10y ago
  I realize this is incredibly naive of me, but I've always thought that there must be something unskilled or lightly trained laborers can do that would scale infinitely and reliably for the company hiring them, something that had to be done in the area for which it provided the service (to prevent the global market from driving price down). The gig economy stuff is interesting, but it's still somewhat limited, and at least partially physical. I am thinking more like M Turk but... somehow localized. Not sure, maybe I'm sniffing up the wrong tree, I dunno.
• EGreg 10y ago
  Speaking about the Future of Work: http://qbix.com/blog http://qbix.com/blog Check out this compensation model. It is an evolving experiment in transparency which I believe can power the future of work. Would like some feedback.
• 6stringmerc 10y ago
  A creative associate of mine has been talking about founding a new US Political Party, which, while not really in-line with this call-for-submissions, can probably benefit from reading the context of what YCombinator is looking for and intending to benefit a large population. Hmmm...
• rdtsc 10y ago
  How about starting a new political party? Is that too crazy to consider? Maybe this is the time to do it. I think one thing that happened recently is that we saw a desire for change. The number and enthusiasm of Sanders and Trump followers points to that. Maybe there is a place for a party to represent the views and values of those who followed Sanders. Just thinking about it, there was a previously unknown, old, white, male politician who had such a tremendous following from so many people. What happened to that crowd? Those people are still out there, young, many in college, new graduates, minorities. It probably includes factory workers from Rust Belt and so on. There were so many followers despite media ignoring them in-large, despite the main DNC establishment disliking them and they still got so many votes. I think doing the same thing over and over with the DNC as before, is probably not going to work. How feasible is to take all those invested billions and create a new movement instead of fighting fake news, why not generate good news. Instead of forgetting about the workers whose jobs are being automated away, perhaps talk about basic income in the way that would be accepted and not be seen as a humiliating hand-out. What better to improve Democracy by creating a more parties to represent and replace the crusty old one with all their baggage and corruption.
  • nemild 10y ago
    New parties are hard. Still, I've found it interesting to think about a group that was only active in 3-5 evenly contested states, that collectively controlled a few percentage of the vote in those states. This small group might have tremendous power to set the agenda, either as a distinct party or one that influenced the presidential candidates.
  • gshulegaard 10y ago
    I agree that more, equally influential, parties are better for the health of US politics...but there are many systemic traits that I believe are prohibitive to new parties becoming equally influential. To even begin addressing the multitude of these issues would require passing laws through our current political system and I am convinced that would be near impossible.
• sidlls 10y ago
  The best technology we can apply to democracy is to have our elections be conducted entirely by pencil and paper with a completely open, public and full count of all votes.
  • nickpsecurity 10y ago
    And of popular votes with no shenanigans on registration or voter ID's.
• disease 10y ago
  I've had shower thoughts about "transparency as a service" before, but putting together the business case for this has proved difficult.
• pklausler 10y ago
  We have an epistemological crisis. Tech can't fix that.
• 1098230213901 10y ago
  Yikes. The idea that any kind of news should be handled by a Ycombinator startup does not make me comfortable at all.
  • cookiecaper 10y ago
    reddit, now frequently a primary news source, was in the first class of YC companies. I don't think there's any inherent contradiction, though I would be concerned that HN would only want to promote news sources that had reddit-like audiences and outcomes. I have some loose interest and IMO some relevant experience in creating a next-gen reddit, would like to try it some day. I have no intention to apply to YC.
• ivankirigin 10y ago
  I wrote up some free startup ideas around digital work. http://blog.kirigin.com/digital-work http://blog.kirigin.com/digital-work tldr: smartphones are a platform to learn skills, to facilitate a network of contractors, and to do work. Put that together for something powerful.
• fiatjaf 10y ago
  Reputation. Reputation is the problem.
  • davidlee1435 10y ago
    Care to extrapolate?
    • saalweachter 10y ago
      Two hundred years ago if you stood up and told a pack of lies, someone would challenge you, and you would either have to back down or face them in a duel. Nowadays you just repeat your lies.
    • fiatjaf 10y ago
      How can we know who is trustworthy, who has a past record of doing things well and honouring his word and who doesn't.
• harray9822 10y ago
  Wow solid goals. I like how reactionary YC is to everything that is going on.
• RangerScience 10y ago
  Here's a question: What secret sauce do [you think that] we, as software people, bring to this table?
• wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  The problem of "fake news" is the same as the age old Koan of truth vs. falsehood. Truth is subjective and relative to the time period and cultural mythologies, and is always changing. How can we even begin to solve this apparent problem if we can't even objectively define our variables, lest we become digital Don Quixotes?
  • notforgot 10y ago
    "1 + 1 = 2" is true and objective for an infinite time period.
    • hyperdunc 10y ago
      But if you want to share that truth it relies on a mutual understanding of what those symbols mean. The language of math is near universal, but political language isn't.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    • wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      That's cool if you're trying to program a rudimentary calculator. However, "Truth" in the sociological sense is not constrained to mathematics.
• anonimus17 10y ago
  I applied to Y combinator with an app that addressed both points raised under news section three years ago and didn't get accepted. Back then we were facing the same issues in Turkey. Ultimately, we had to close down the site because Turkish government was silencing every opposing voice. Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW.
  • grzm 10y ago
    Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW. How is this sentiment useful? Sorry, guys. Whatever you do now is invalidated by what you didn't do before. The past is only useful as something we can learn from. Focussing on what can be done now is something we can actually grapple with, change, and improve.
    • anonimus17 10y ago
      That is your interpretation of my comment. Notice how you are twisting it with the "Sorry, guys". I support YC's effort. After all, I spent many hours of my life on solving this very problem through my non-profit startup. Fake news has been a big problem for a long time for many countries. It would have been great if YC took an action before it became USA's problem. Think about the impact they could have made! I guess hindsight is 20/20.
      • grzm 10y ago
        Indeed, that's how I interpret it. I generally try hard to avoid snark myself in responses, as it rarely is effective at engendering sympathy or support or understanding. I'm getting exhausted at all of the accusations of "why weren't you concerned then?" that are being thrown around HN the past couple of days. They're absolutely not constructive. I apologize for letting it slip this time. Funny how you guys are now thinking this is a big issue NOW. It's hard to interpret this charitably. On the face of it, it's a sideways, snarky accusation of hypocrisy. I have a hard time reading it any other way. People are human. People grow and change. People pay more attention when things affect them directly, or at least are closer to home. Is that really wrong? Or just realistic? It's wonderful but mistakenly idealistic to think that everyone can be concerned about everything that's wrong all the time. People have limited resources. Of course people should be held accountable for their actions, but we also have to allow for the possibility of change, of becoming better. Sometimes it takes a significant kick to get people moving. Are we going to begrudge them the fact that they're moving now? And as a sibling comment pointed out, I'm sure there's a lot that goes into the evaluation YC candidates.
• mixedbit 10y ago
  What do you think about a following evolution of the advertisement network idea that could support higher quality content creation? A company Foo connects content creators, consumers and businesses. Creators can join the 'Foo' network and display a short 'join the Foo to support this site' info on their pages without any other ads. Consumers can join the Foo network to have access to deals offered by businesses. Businesses can reach to the Foo network members offering discounts for their products. A part of such discount is transfered to the consumer, giving an incentive to buy on the Foo network. A part goes to the content creators. After each purchases a consumer is asked to which creators the money should go. A small part from each transaction goes to Foo. Unlike with ads network today, the user is in full control of which sites receive money from the user transactions, so the incentive to create useless clickbait sites is gone. Content also no longer needs to be cluttered with ads, because there is a separation between content consumption and business transactions that support the content.
• jessedhillon 10y ago
  Is the application page out of date? It's still referring to Winter 2017, and a deadline of October 4. However, this post says YC apps are reviewed on a rolling basis.
  • ScottBurson 10y ago
    Yes, I wondered about that too. Have they switched to reviewing all applications on a rolling basis? Or is it just applications in these particular categories?
• dandare 10y ago
  I have a very specific idea on how to improve democracy. Make all public spending easy to search. Let me elaborate: Via direct and indirect taxes democratic governments take and redistribute between 30% and 50% of our income[1]. Yet we usually have no idea how exactly is it the money spent. This has two effects: 1) many disenfranchised people think state spending is somehow secret therefore "all politicians steel" and "the system is evil". This leads to low participation in election, populism etc. 2) even if we try to be good citizens we make uninformed decisions. Specific example from UK: how should we decide whether to keep a fleet of nuclear Trident submarines or axe 30,000 teacher jobs? Is the cost even comparable? During the Brexit campaign someone once posted financial hoax on my FB feed - how much we spend on X. I went to verify the facts only to discover it is absolutely impossible to find how much we spend on anything. After hours of researching all I could find were perplexing .gov websites, unsearchable PDF documents, CSVs too big to open in excel and that obfuscated by impenetrable accounting jargon. Compare it to this: if I ask you what were the earnings of the second movie produced by whoever produced Angelina Jolie's last movie you could probably find the answer on IMDB in less than a minute. And I don't mean only government spending, I mean the whole public sector. States, departments, bureaus, agencies, offices, cities, towns, courts, libraries, schools, hospitals, public benefit corporations. In the end public finance is by definition public and the information should be available to everyone. If you think of it there are only 3 ways a tax dollar could leave public finance: as a salary to employees, as a payment for goods and services from private sector or as a transfer to another organisation or individual. Build a website, get all the data, make it extremely user friendly, easy to search, navigate and share and people will start fact checking each other in FB conversations a participate more in local politics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Day_around_the_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Da...
  • gizmo 10y ago
    I support transparency in government spending, especially financial information in a standardized format. However, I don't share your optimism regular people will be able to make sense of this data. Just take the financials for public companies for example. Because all public companies report their financials in GAAP formats you'd think that therefore it would be easy to look at a company's balance sheet and cash flow statement to figure out what's really going on, right? Except it isn't. Despite standardized accounting rules and a standardized reporting format it's still very difficult to tell what's really going on behind the numbers. With the stock market there is a huge incentive for analysts to figure out what the numbers represent, for obvious reasons. And yet, more often than not, analysts get it totally wrong. There won't be similar army of analysts for public spending disclosures, just a couple of dedicated individuals, think tanks, and PhD students. I still support full financial transparency for the public sector, but I don't think it will have a huge impact because numbers by themselves say very little.
• pklausler 10y ago
  Democracy in the US sounds like a great idea. Republicans have won exactly one of the past 7 Presidential elections (viz. 2004) but took power in two more thanks to the Electoral College.
  • dukeluke 10y ago
    The electoral college was designed so the highly populated states don't have too much leverage over the rest of the country, and worked as was intended. There are many areas of the country seeing a declining quality of life, and those areas happened to vote for the candidate who spoke of economic issues more.
    • dragonwriter 10y ago
      The electoral college was designed so that slave states, who got extra seats in the House compared to their population of citizens through the 3/5 compromise, would have Presidential electoral power proportional to the degree to which they were overrepresented in Congress, rather than in line with their number of voting citizens. It is designed as a positive reward for the remaining enfranchised population for disenfranchising a portion of the population counted for apportionment. It is, indeed, working as intended, the problem is that the intent was ill from the beginning.
      • dukeluke 10y ago
        Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_States%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...
        • pklausler 10y ago
          How the bloody hell is his comment "race baiting"??
          • dukeluke 10y ago
• rwhitman 10y ago
  Are there any resources out there for tech folks that might be interested in working full-time for a non-profit, backed by YC or not? I have a strong interest in these areas but not really in the zone for building a team to apply for YC. Increasingly interested in a career pivot towards working with an organization in these areas however. Where should I look?
  • bradyo 10y ago
    Look at companies the fast forward accelerator features on their website (mobile or would link otherwise).
    • rwhitman 10y ago
      Good tip. Thanks ;)
• abalone 10y ago
  > We’re looking to fund... new revenue tools that can bolster and sustain independent media organizations. Dear YC: I wholeheartedly support this and strongly recommend these books as required reading for anyone seeking to change how media works in our society. 1. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Noam Chomsky & Ed Herman[1] 2. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty by Alex Carey[2] I realize these have an "anti-corporate" bent to them but they are truly good analyses and well worth reading with at the very least a critical eye. As Carey documents, it is the corporate sector that has developed much of the modern tools of manipulating mass opinion. More than mere fact checking, I think you will find that the chief challenge to achieving sustainable independent media is the business model. Advertising necessarily biases media towards at least the class interests of advertisers (if not any particular one), or else it would go out of business. Meanwhile it has trained readers to not pay the full price of quality content. This is a fundamental problem. Another challenge is that companies have business models that support their own PR and lobbying while ordinary citizens do not. That is unless they are organized and combined resources, but with the dissipation of unions there is no strong popular economic counterpoint to corporate PR. This is part of our news system as well. I very much hope some good work can be done here, with a sober and clear understanding of the fundamental challenges. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model [2] https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy-Communication/dp/0252066162 https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy-Communicati...
• eevilspock 10y ago
  If YC is serious about fixing "online media [that] rewards the people who get the greatest number of page views, clicks and likes. That results in a system that prizes virality over truth," it should open up Hacker News itself for Hacking. What better way to stimulate experimentation and facilitate the testing of ideas for better collaborative news filtering? I believe many potentially world-changing ideas in this area never see the light of day because the barriers to entry are too high. Innovation is hindered by a chicken-n-egg barrier to entry: you need a successful site like HN to be able to run useful tests and experiments. Imagine there were only four chemistry labs in the world. Only a fraction out of the world's chemists could run experiments. The only labs we have are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and HN. Hackable Hacker News. Doesn't that just make sense?
• whistlerbrk 10y ago
  I have a startup idea I've been working on for quite a while, that I stopped when I realized I needed to reexamine the technology from the ground up. I've since learned a lot which will allow me to proceed -- this election and mainly the political climate has me wishing I could work on it full time and I would absolutely love to apply. Should I apply late or wait for the next funding cycle?
  • ryanSrich 10y ago
    YC is more than halfway through the Winter batch. Start working on your company now and you'll be in good shape to apply for the Summer batch.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• jayajay 10y ago
  Oh boy, fake news is just getting started! People are scared now? Wait until an entity can generate your voice saying whatever they want it to say, generate your body doing whatever they want it to do, generate scenes and events which never happened. Fake news now is less effective against well-educated, smart, skeptical, scientific people. It just so happens that fake news is dumb enough to only fool 80% of us. As the methods for generating false information ("fake news" is not a general term) get more advanced, people will need to be more and more educated to resist falling into machine dependency. If you're gonna get on the fake news train, do it now, as fake news is easy right now. Bots are still dumb, etc. In the future it won't be so easy to combat fake news. It will be a much, much more grave problem. If there are people who are uneducated enough to be influenced by fake news now, they will be sheep in the future even more so, when they are told lies of events, audio clips, video clips, etc. that never even happened. Fake news, or more generally, false information, is going to be a big problem in the 22nd century. As our machines get smarter, so do our deception methods. At some point, humans will begin to place trust in machines because we will no longer be smart enough to figure it out ourselves. Currently the non-savvy population (maybe, ~80%?) has begun to do this already. At what point will our scientists begin to fall on the same side of that partition, until only a few scientists in the top of their field actually get it. We have already observed this God-Effect in esoteric fields. God-Effect: Where a piece of technology, mathematics, or code becomes so complicated, eventually only a few people (or zero) actually understand it. E.g. complicated edge-physics, library implementations, encrypted data, etc.
• davidgerard 10y ago
  Conventional Wikipedia-quality news outlets are doing well at present, btw - the NYT reported in November that subscriptions had skyrocketed since the election. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says-subscriptions-are-booming-after-trumps-election.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says-subscript... I've been very pleased to see in the past couple of weeks that journalists have discovered actual journalism again, the sort that doesn't go for false balance and instead paints obvious BS as BS. Which is heartening to see, if a year late. Having the customers be the readers, not random advertisers, appears to be a way to get the right things happening. So if you want to do a news startup, work out ramen profitability in the era of adblockers. I might note also: my Facebook two weeks ago was "here's fun stuff your friends are doing, here's their funny cat pictures" and now it's 24/7 "LATEST DISPATCHES FROM THE WAR AGAINST THE INVADING HELL DEMONS". My wife boots her brain every morning reading Facebook on the tablet and I've asked her to keep it to only the worst news from overnight. (I used to read my Facebook to get a rest from that sort of thing on my Tumblr. I must admit I'm not doing so well at making my own FB anything other than LATEST HELL DEMONS news.) I mean, this is understandable - a lot of these people are seriously worried for themselves and their loved ones. So there's a market of pissed-off liberals who've newly discovered radicalism and would like it without BS, that present liberal-pandering outlets aren't quite feeding. What would something that works for that look like? How would you get their $3/month?
• mnemotronic 10y ago
  I want to take an alternative route. I want to start a company that generates fake news. I believe that AI could be used to analyze social media and determine the popularity of various threads or which stories get the broadest circulation in social media circles. Then analyze the content and wording to determine transmissibility; what makes something "go viral". Obviously a lot of this technology could be used to tag other fake news, but I'm in it to make money. Lies, deceit and deception; "Alternative Facts" and "Signaling" if you prefer, are the name of the game now. Nobody ever went broke underestimating the gullibility of the American public. That being said, I think it would be a huge challenge for AI to comprehend all the nuances, inferences and subtle hints in many tweets or facebook posts and dig out both the explicit and implicit meanings.
• julianozen 10y ago
  Really happy to see new jobs on this list. UBI seemed like a lazy way of addressing job loss
• lettercarrier 10y ago
  I assume the same rules apply.. have to move to SF.. I can't help but comment that we did have a great democracy machine (& education) with something called Television. Virtually free. So much potential. I guess before that - radio. Even newspapers. Before that word of mouth. Each machine had it's masters who rose to the top. We are in the beginning of phase 2 ( my def.) of social media. We are all in the middle of the 5 layer cake while it's cooking and because of Donald Trump we already don't like the recipe. This phase of social media too will deform into something less than we thought it was going to be. Just like television. It is fun to watch but clearly it is too late to save it. I doubt the next 'newspaper,radio,tv,social media' will be created by those inside of it.
• aclsid 10y ago
  As far as truth is concerned, there can be no algorithm that can take care of that for a very simple reason. Media has an inherent bias all the time, be it geographical, cultural, political, etc. Read an article in the BBC about the Russian Federation or China, and it will always have some sort of, oh but check this bad thing these guys are doing, or they are weird in some way. Do the same with Fox News and you will come out with a view that Democrats are ruining the country. I could go on and on, but the most effective way to get your daily fix is, read both sides of an issue by their promoters. Read what the bigot and the gay guy are saying. What the jew and the muslim are saying. What the Chinese and Japanese are saying. Make up your mind, choose sides, but at least you will have tiny pieces of info that were conveniently left out by the other side.
• danbmil99 10y ago
  What we don't need is another "Spotify for Truth". Recommendation engine tech, reworked, is laregely responsible for the siloed echo-chambers we tribaly inhabit. You like that fact? Here's another one just like it.
• hsavit1 10y ago
  I have a pretty good idea for an app that I'd like to make and I'd like to apply. However after reading through the article it seems as if the deadline has already passed?? Would I be applying for Spring 2017? Also, any advice on what constitutes a strong application (in other words: I don't yet have a working product, can I still apply? )
• bmm01 10y ago
  In many respects, Y Combinator, or really, start ups more broadly, seem uniquely ill equipped to solve this problem. Startups seem to be especially incompatible with the business challenges that face media companies right now. While perhaps the S curve of user growth could be attained by a media startup, the S curve of revenue isn't. And if it was, the quality of the journalism it produced would be terrible. Viral content is almost invariably superficial, frivolous and uninformative, or has an emotional quality very different from the impartial, sober thinking that we now need. Americans have so many prejudices against publicly funded media. There's a widespread belief that if the government funds your media, its editorial perspective will reflect the government's interests. It's a completely misguided assumption in the case of, say, the CBC. The insulation from competition, and, therefore, not having to optimize content for sharing or views is necessary for producing quality, informative content. The New York Times seems to be holding onto at least a sliver of its integrity because it doesn't use such metrics, and instead is funded by subscriptions. But government funding could be valuable too (although there'd be hurdles). That being said, the person who cracks the code for how to run a lucrative content/journalism business will make a lot of money.
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• aerovistae 10y ago
  This RFS isn't listed under "which RFS are you applying under" on the application page.
• matheweis 10y ago
  About news - I think this recent tweet by Elon Musk is particularly relevant: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/825936326264360961 "Reading the source material is better than reading other people's opinions about the source material" It'd probably need a few iterations to get it right, but I'd be willing to pay somewhere in the range of $25/mo for something that published or linked directly to the source material that is driving the current news cycle along with a succinct summary with no commentary. Something vaguely HN-like but for all current news topics, not just tech news.
• ako 10y ago
  Fake news is going to be hard to address. Imagine a browser warning for fake news. Every article about religion or God would need to be accompanied by a warning: speculative, no concluding evidence available, too many competing theories. I guess that wouldn't gain many users.
  • dwenzek 10y ago
    When I hear "fake news", I understand "news about fake facts" and not "opinions which may be erroneous". The issue is to favor the true debates, with different points of view, and to remove the noise which prohibits and prevents from speaking or hearing others.
• intended 10y ago
  Please please please remember that any tool created can and will be used against you.
• empath75 10y ago
  This seems kind of hypocritical, given what Thiel did to Gawker.
• DanBC 10y ago
  There's some interesting ideas in this link, about people wrangling data to show information about Putin's information warfare. I'd be intrigued to see these techniques of analysis applied to Trump and democrats. http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin_in_his_information_war_against_the_west/ http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin...