8 ms·

Hackers rarely think of politics as playing field for startups, so in my mind this one of the biggest untapped opportunity right now. People from both sides are

by sytelus 10y ago

Hackers rarely think of politics as playing field for startups, so in my mind this one of the biggest untapped opportunity right now. People from both sides are going nuts over Trump politics. That means tons of eyeballs and attention that would be available for the right startups for next 4 years. Things like BuzzFeed and DailyXYZ are going to make a massive killing in terms of ad revenue. At this stage still the real disruptive startup are few and far between. Nice thing is that you might actually end up doing something good and impactful. If Zuck runs for president, may be even big exit ;). I can think of few ideas right away: - website that gives stories from other side - activist website that uses better tactic than "getting signatures" - know how your congressman votes on each of the vote - automatic ratings generator for congressman - news article that only comes from international press - software for politicians: campaign management, voter management, political ad management etc

nevdka 10y ago
You could also think of a new political party as a startup. Run your own candidates for congress, and run for president yourself.
mattsouth 10y ago
This is the sort of thing mysociety.org does pretty well in the uk
panic 10y ago
- know how your congressman votes on each of the vote If anyone from Facebook is reading, this would be a great feature for the site. Imagine following your representatives and getting their votes automatically in your newsfeed.
- gingerbread-man 10y ago
  It would make a great plugin for national news sites, though their internal software teams could build this feature pretty quickly themselves.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  The real value add here would be an explanation of each piece of legislation. Merely knowing the aye or nay vote isn't very useful without understanding what the resolution is actually doing, and it's usually not obvious to the untrained reader.
- jsymolon 10y ago
  > know how your congressman votes on each of the vote Actually, the opposite may be a better way. Our representatives votes should be secret for the same reason that the people votes is secret: prevents the voter from being intimidated and from selling his/her vote.
  - mthoms 10y ago
    Interesting thought. You know, you could also just make it illegal to "sell" votes in the way the United States currently allows? Most other Western/Democratic countries figured this out a long, long time ago.
    - daveguy 10y ago
      No need to make it illegal. Votes can't be sold because they can't be confirmed (it's anonymous). That's not what they are talking about here. They are talking about representative votes and yes, it is illegal to buy/sell congressional votes. It is also not private, just like every other Western/Democratic representative government.
  - panic 10y ago
    It's a completely different situation. Their job is to represent the people who elected them. How would you know your representative actually represents you without knowing how they vote?
iUsedToCode 10y ago
I'm doing exactly this, spreading the opportunity to legally own a firearm in Poland (https://braterstwo.eu https://braterstwo.eu). It's a Wordpress plugin, php scripts and a bit of legal stuff (creating a NGO, bank account with automatic payment identifications, etc). It allows lots of people (thousands now) to obtain a permit. Poland has the lowest quantity of firearms in the whole Europe (and one of the lowest in the world). Taking the current mood around us now (terror attacks, war in Ukraine and possibly -- god I hope not -- other eastern countries) and the obvious coolness of legally owning a firearm i think it's a good initiative. Legal owners tend to be more law abiding and more self sufficient. We need role models like that, IMO. I encourage more programmers to automate stuff that the state messes up. It's a lot of things! PS. My NGO only helps lawful, sane adults. No felon, no person with mental illness and no kids can obtain a gun permit in Poland.
- Lordarminius 10y ago
  Poland has the lowest quantity of firearms in Europe and you want to change that? A bit strange yes? I don't think private firearms are very useful for international conflicts like Ukraine/Russia or to defeat terrorist attacks.
  - 91bananas 10y ago
    No, but they may become extremely useful in times of civil unrest if that were to happen.
    - webmaven 10y ago
      > [Firearms] may become extremely useful in times of civil unrest Not really: * There is always someone with a bigger gun * There is always someone who wants to steal your gun/ammo * There is always a bigger gang that wants to steal your gun If your solution is to join up with others to make your gang the biggest/best armed and enforcing a monopoly on the use of violence, congratulations, you've either reinvented Warlordism, or in the best case, reinvented the idea of a police force, depending on whether or not the head of the gang answers to a civil authority whose legitimacy comes from something other than "might makes right". All that said, I don't mean that firearms aren't at all useful, just that they aren't more useful than other important tools. You for a group to be able to defend itself you will find that basics like picks, shovels, sledgehammers, crowbars, hammer and nails, axes and hatchets, saws, ladders, wheelbarrows etc. are all at least as useful as a firearm. Generally speaking, making the other guy waste his ammo can be a winning strategy.
pjc50 10y ago
An interesting (long, rambling) read on the subject by someone from the inside: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit... I believe they open sourced some of their software after the campaign too, although not all the sophisticated ad-targeting. The message seems to be that if you target enough misleading ads at underinformed floating voters, you can shift an election. > - know how your congressman votes on each of the vote See theyworkforyou.com for the UK, which I believe they're trying to generalise internationally. > - news article that only comes from international press This is an interesting one and potentially useful. You want to see press that's not targeted advertising to you. Actually making any money from it (or any media operation) is still hard though. The best way to make money from media is to sell out as hard as possible, which is bad for reporting.
brangalina4eva 10y ago
Auto-fact checker. Realtime analysis of the bullshit most politicians say so that journalists can immediately challenge them in realtime with the actual facts.
character0 10y ago
Countable is a pretty good app for tracking votes and making it easy to contact your representatives. There are also more straightforward sites that track this information, like govtrack. https://www.countable.us/ https://www.countable.us/ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes
KiwiCoder 10y ago
In the past six months I've seen an uptick in the number of politically motivated software projects appearing on SocialCoder.org Examples; - CollAction [http://socialcoder.org/9dy http://socialcoder.org/9dy] - Fight Back Wisely [http://socialcoder.org/80s http://socialcoder.org/80s] - Carpool Vote [http://socialcoder.org/8qv http://socialcoder.org/8qv]
swamp40 10y ago
And a blockchain on information flow so you can easily backtrack fake news to its origin - with one "find origin" click.
skyfires218 10y ago
http://www.allsides.com/ http://www.allsides.com/ Doesn't have voting stats, but would be a great addition
icefox 10y ago
Who would pay directly or indirectly for any of these?

by sytelus 10y ago

nevdka 10y ago

You could also think of a new political party as a startup. Run your own candidates for congress, and run for president yourself.

mattsouth 10y ago

This is the sort of thing mysociety.org does pretty well in the uk

panic 10y ago

- know how your congressman votes on each of the vote If anyone from Facebook is reading, this would be a great feature for the site. Imagine following your representatives and getting their votes automatically in your newsfeed.

gingerbread-man 10y ago
It would make a great plugin for national news sites, though their internal software teams could build this feature pretty quickly themselves.
Gargoyle 10y ago
The real value add here would be an explanation of each piece of legislation. Merely knowing the aye or nay vote isn't very useful without understanding what the resolution is actually doing, and it's usually not obvious to the untrained reader.
jsymolon 10y ago
> know how your congressman votes on each of the vote Actually, the opposite may be a better way. Our representatives votes should be secret for the same reason that the people votes is secret: prevents the voter from being intimidated and from selling his/her vote.
- mthoms 10y ago
  Interesting thought. You know, you could also just make it illegal to "sell" votes in the way the United States currently allows? Most other Western/Democratic countries figured this out a long, long time ago.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    No need to make it illegal. Votes can't be sold because they can't be confirmed (it's anonymous). That's not what they are talking about here. They are talking about representative votes and yes, it is illegal to buy/sell congressional votes. It is also not private, just like every other Western/Democratic representative government.
- panic 10y ago
  It's a completely different situation. Their job is to represent the people who elected them. How would you know your representative actually represents you without knowing how they vote?

iUsedToCode 10y ago

I'm doing exactly this, spreading the opportunity to legally own a firearm in Poland (https://braterstwo.eu https://braterstwo.eu). It's a Wordpress plugin, php scripts and a bit of legal stuff (creating a NGO, bank account with automatic payment identifications, etc). It allows lots of people (thousands now) to obtain a permit. Poland has the lowest quantity of firearms in the whole Europe (and one of the lowest in the world). Taking the current mood around us now (terror attacks, war in Ukraine and possibly -- god I hope not -- other eastern countries) and the obvious coolness of legally owning a firearm i think it's a good initiative. Legal owners tend to be more law abiding and more self sufficient. We need role models like that, IMO. I encourage more programmers to automate stuff that the state messes up. It's a lot of things! PS. My NGO only helps lawful, sane adults. No felon, no person with mental illness and no kids can obtain a gun permit in Poland.

Lordarminius 10y ago
Poland has the lowest quantity of firearms in Europe and you want to change that? A bit strange yes? I don't think private firearms are very useful for international conflicts like Ukraine/Russia or to defeat terrorist attacks.
- 91bananas 10y ago
  No, but they may become extremely useful in times of civil unrest if that were to happen.
  - webmaven 10y ago
    > [Firearms] may become extremely useful in times of civil unrest Not really: * There is always someone with a bigger gun * There is always someone who wants to steal your gun/ammo * There is always a bigger gang that wants to steal your gun If your solution is to join up with others to make your gang the biggest/best armed and enforcing a monopoly on the use of violence, congratulations, you've either reinvented Warlordism, or in the best case, reinvented the idea of a police force, depending on whether or not the head of the gang answers to a civil authority whose legitimacy comes from something other than "might makes right". All that said, I don't mean that firearms aren't at all useful, just that they aren't more useful than other important tools. You for a group to be able to defend itself you will find that basics like picks, shovels, sledgehammers, crowbars, hammer and nails, axes and hatchets, saws, ladders, wheelbarrows etc. are all at least as useful as a firearm. Generally speaking, making the other guy waste his ammo can be a winning strategy.

pjc50 10y ago

An interesting (long, rambling) read on the subject by someone from the inside: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit-referendum-won/ http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/dominic-cummings-brexit... I believe they open sourced some of their software after the campaign too, although not all the sophisticated ad-targeting. The message seems to be that if you target enough misleading ads at underinformed floating voters, you can shift an election. > - know how your congressman votes on each of the vote See theyworkforyou.com for the UK, which I believe they're trying to generalise internationally. > - news article that only comes from international press This is an interesting one and potentially useful. You want to see press that's not targeted advertising to you. Actually making any money from it (or any media operation) is still hard though. The best way to make money from media is to sell out as hard as possible, which is bad for reporting.

brangalina4eva 10y ago

Auto-fact checker. Realtime analysis of the bullshit most politicians say so that journalists can immediately challenge them in realtime with the actual facts.

character0 10y ago

Countable is a pretty good app for tracking votes and making it easy to contact your representatives. There are also more straightforward sites that track this information, like govtrack. https://www.countable.us/ https://www.countable.us/ https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes

KiwiCoder 10y ago

In the past six months I've seen an uptick in the number of politically motivated software projects appearing on SocialCoder.org Examples; - CollAction [http://socialcoder.org/9dy http://socialcoder.org/9dy] - Fight Back Wisely [http://socialcoder.org/80s http://socialcoder.org/80s] - Carpool Vote [http://socialcoder.org/8qv http://socialcoder.org/8qv]

swamp40 10y ago

And a blockchain on information flow so you can easily backtrack fake news to its origin - with one "find origin" click.

skyfires218 10y ago

http://www.allsides.com/ http://www.allsides.com/ Doesn't have voting stats, but would be a great addition

icefox 10y ago

Who would pay directly or indirectly for any of these?