
Request for Startups: News, Jobs, and Democracy - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/rfs-news-jobs-and-democracy/
======
thowar2
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.

~~~
saalweachter
See, I hear techies grumble about education constantly. Our education system
is teaching the wrong skills or not challenging students or just an elaborate
babysitting racket.

I hear teachers, on the other hand, complain that after decades of trying
everything they can, they've realized that they cannot help students unless
those students have safe, stable, supportive home lives.

It's easy to say we should introduce children to programming early, even easy
to do. It is easy to complain about critical thinking skills and kids these
days. It is easy to see that overtesting schools and overreacting to those
test scores wastes resources and the time of children and teachers.

It's hard to find a way to ensure one in six children in the US subject to
food insecurity always get three good meals a day. It is hard to figure out
how to provide stability in a single family, let alone all families. It is
hard to say a child shouldn't drop out of school and work whatever job they
can when their parents have been unable or unwilling to provide for them.

We have been talking about and trying to fix "education" my entire life; maybe
we should try fixing some of the underlying problems first, even if they are
hard.

~~~
tomjen3
None of those are particular hard. Start by ending snap and using the money to
increase the number of meals in schools to three a day. Second those meals
must be some protein, some veggies and potatoes, pizza, etc are not food.

~~~
saalweachter
One of the difficulties in guaranteeing adequate childhood nutrition is that
children are only in schools for about 180 days a year, in the US, but need to
eat approximately 365 days each year.

------
maxxxxx
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.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_Silicon Valley is a great example of growing inequality. Most of the rewards
go disproportionally to a select few at the top._

That's a good thing:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html)

"Decreasing economic inequality means taking money from the rich. Since risk
and reward are equivalent, decreasing potential rewards automatically
decreases people's appetite for risk. Startups are intrinsically risky.
Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders will not
invest their time in a startup. Founders are irreplaceable. So eliminating
economic inequality means eliminating startups."

~~~
shawn-furyan
This _actual analysis_ from The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which
uses long running public (easily accessible) data from the Census Bureau, the
BDS report[1], suggests that income inequality hurts startup creation rather
than helping it.

Note: The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is
associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a
good proxy for middle class wealth. Here's a quick not fully vetted
interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they
start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational
income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking
at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these
numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions.

Note 2: The FRBoSF analysis isn't perfect for answering this question, but at
least it's a good start, unlike the pure logic approach (despite the easy
availability of good longitudinal Census data on the subject) that Graham
published.

Note 3: The Graham essay is an essay on income inequality that came out before
the atomic bomb that Picketty dropped on the subject. It really shouldn't be
dragged out now because the research landscape on the field has been
completely changed since it was written.

Final Note: I know that every time the word startup is used on HN, it spurs a
'No True Scotsman' debate about what qualities invalidate a new business from
the label startup. Not remotely important. The FRBoSF article notes that new
businesses have faster job growth than older businesses and that's the larger
subject in question. Trying to throw companies out only serves to move the
conversation from fact based to conjecture based by throwing out a perfectly
good source of facts relevant to the matter.

[1]
[http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/](http://www.census.gov/ces/dataproducts/bds/)

~~~
sillysaurus3
_The specific relationship that they find is that startup creation is
associated with home prices. This makes sense in the US, as home prices are a
good proxy for middle class wealth. Here 's a quick not fully vetted
interpretation of this finding: When the middle class is relatively rich, they
start businesses. When it is relatively poor, they don't. The aspirational
income inequality that Graham posits doesn't immediately jump out when looking
at year by year new startup numbers on a graph. I'm currently analyzing these
numbers, but it's pretty clear that they don't support Graham's assumptions._

He addresses this line of logic in a separate essay:
[http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html](http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html)

"A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that there is a
fixed amount of wealth in the world. There is, in any normal family, a fixed
amount of money at any moment. But that's not the same thing.

When wealth is talked about in this context, it is often described as a pie.
"You can't make the pie larger," say politicians. When you're talking about
the amount of money in one family's bank account, or the amount available to a
government from one year's tax revenue, this is true. If one person gets more,
someone else has to get less.

I can remember believing, as a child, that if a few rich people had all the
money, it left less for everyone else. Many people seem to continue to believe
something like this well into adulthood. This fallacy is usually there in the
background when you hear someone talking about how x percent of the population
have y percent of the wealth. If you plan to start a startup, then whether you
realize it or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy."

~~~
Analemma_
A couple things you should do, if you want to have better discussions:

First, you should stop quoting pg's essays as though they were infallible
sources of truth. It's not helping your argument. I like some of his essays;
others are misleading or dead wrong (for example:
[http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)).
Empirical evidence always beats philosophical pondering; shawn-furyan provided
_data_ that pg was wrong, and you did nothing but post another data-free
essay.

Second, you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who
don't understand simple concepts like growth of wealth. We do; of course it is
possible to "grow the pie". But since the 1970's, the majority of GDP growth
has translated to income gains only for the top decile. And in such a regime,
why should everyone else bother to grow the pie? What income inequality has
done is create people who make a rational, and perfectly valid, calculation
that "growth" is pointless and not worth fighting for, since they won't see
any of it.

~~~
sillysaurus3
You're reading much too far into my comments. I posted the quotes to see what
other people think of them, nothing more. If the response is that data beats
logic, then that's a fine point.

 _you should stop assuming your ideological opponents are idiots who don 't
understand simple concepts_

This is a personal attack, though. Please don't do that.

------
tptacek
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
> 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.

~~~
davidw
I have a feeling part of why they don't use tech solutions is that the 'cost'
of making a statement is valuable information: if a ton of people are willing
to spend 10 minutes to make a call, that tells you something. Having 100
people, half of them Russian bots, click on a "+1" button, might not tell you
as much.

~~~
smacktoward
Having worked myself as a constituent contact in a Congressional office, I can
tell you from experience that you are exactly right. Someone who's willing to
hand-write a letter and pay for a stamp is seen as a more motivated
constituent -- more likely to care enough about the issue to have it decide
how they'll vote in November, in other words -- than someone who makes a call;
and the caller is more motivated than someone who clicks "send" on an email;
and the emailer is more motivated than someone who signs a Web petition.

For a long time, in fact, this mindset meant that a _really_ effective way to
"hack" the Congressional contact system was to send your message in a
_telegram_ \-- because if you were willing to pay to have a messenger run your
message across town and deliver it by hand, you were assumed to be very
motivated indeed!

(I doubt that's true anymore, of course; not least because I'm not sure you
_can_ send telegrams anymore. But now I'm wondering if you could get the same
effect these days by sending your message via FedEx's most expensive
service...)

~~~
davidw
I asked this elsewhere, but does being a donor matter at all for
calls/letters? If so they check the dollar amount?

~~~
smacktoward
I was never asked to; Congressional offices and campaign offices are supposed
to be legally distinct, and that information would have all been held by the
campaign.

That being said, once the sums you contribute get large enough you will almost
certainly get to be known around the office -- either explicitly (e.g. the
Chief of Staff tells all the people who handle correspondence "Bob Smith is a
good friend of the Congressman's, if you find any messages from him bring
those straight to me") or implicitly (e.g. the staff of the Congressional
office notices that when Bob Smith comes in to meet with the boss he's ushered
right in and stays for a long time). So large contributors' messages can
easily get special attention, even without that kind of direct connection to
their contributions ever being made.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, I'm sure if you're a Big Donor that's one thing, but that's not what I
want to do. Was just curious if by saying you're a donor on your phone call
whether it might make a difference.

------
alphonsegaston
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
> _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
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.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I wasn't really even thinking about "command and control framework". More
about the culture of Star Trek universe - "the future based on science,
health, the arts, and shared prosperity", where people _respect_ science,
competence, teamwork and humanitarian values.

One thing I always loved about Star Trek worldview is that characters in the
show always believe people they meet are _competent_ at what they do, instead
of assuming that they're working with morons. Ditto for the bureaucracy of the
UFP - it's assumed competent until proven otherwise; not like in our world,
where the government is always assumed idiotic by default.

~~~
alphonsegaston
Right, but framing is desperately important in this context. If you say we
want to build a Star Trek future, in no short order you'll have people jumping
all over you about how it's an authoritarian communist fantasy. I've seen this
exact thing happen on this forum.

If instead, its framed as expanding the idea of American Federalism, diverse
entities working towards vision of the future rooted in these ideals, I think
it will be more successful.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I understand now. A good point, I agree.

------
baursak
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.

~~~
zxcvvcxz
> 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.

This sounds strikingly socialist.

As a small business owner, the one who took the risk to start it, invested my
own savings, and put things together so I could coordinate selling products
with paying employees, _you 're damn right it's my regime._ If I didn't think
it would be mine, I never would have started it. The future rewards would be
non-existent, relevant to being a cog somewhere else. _And my customers would
never get the added value of what I make from the business I never would have
started._

Instead of having increased ownership, autonomy, and earnings potential, I
have to negotiate and play politics with other people who I know aren't as
intrinsically motivated as myself? Forget it, that's entirely unrealistic.
Think about what you're saying - this is not how value, wealth, and prosperity
is created. Nobody is going to vote me out of being CEO, because if that were
possible I wouldn't have put in the tough work (and created the value) that
goes along with being a CEO.

And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm
doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company. The
parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the system,
such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to starting
competitors.

Sorry pal, but surface-level idealism doesn't square with real-life incentives
and rewards. What I'm in favor for is reducing regulations and other burdens
so that you or any employees in general have the option of starting their own
companies and competing with me. That's a much better way for them to "take"
the value of my shares, rather than just voting it to themselves with no work
done.

~~~
kmicklas
> And the capitalist system works fine, because if these employees think I'm
> doing a shit job, they do have a vote: leave and start their own company.

I didn't know it was this possible to be so non self aware.

> The parts that don't work are actually the more socialist parts of the
> system, such as bailouts for big behemoth, and regulatory barriers to
> starting competitors.

Socialism is when the government does things, and the more things it does, the
socialister it is!

~~~
grzm
_I didn 't know it was this possible to be so non self aware._

No matter how ignorant you may think another poster is, it's never okay on HN
to be uncivil. Particularly with contentious topics, it's even more important
to raise to level of civility to ensure constructive discussion.

~~~
kmicklas
This isn't uncivil. This is pointing out that OP's statement is factually
ignorant of the economic possibilities for 99% of the population.

~~~
grzm
If you believe the poster is missing important facts, and you're willing to
take the time to do so, let them know what it is you think they're missing in
a constructive, non-combative manner. Claiming someone is heretofore
unimaginably non self-aware is a direct personal insult, which is never
appropriate on HN. Please contribute substantively and civilly, or refrain
from doing so.

------
baron816
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
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
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.

------
EdwardCoffin
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
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!

------
cpursley
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
> 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.

------
AnimalMuppet
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...

------
abalone
_> 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-
Communicati...](https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Risk-Out-Democracy-
Communication/dp/0252066162)

------
mjolk
> 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
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
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
No offense taken. See my answer above.

------
matheweis
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.

------
anonimus17
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
_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
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
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.

------
davidgerard
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-
subscript...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/17/new-york-times-says-
subscriptions-are-booming-after-trumps-election.html)

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?

------
joshpadnick
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...](https://joshpadnick.com/2016/11/25/a-proposal-for-a-new-type-of-
media-source-true-news). Personally, I'd love to be a consumer of something
like this, or to know if there are startups working on this.

~~~
RangerScience
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.

------
PaulHoule
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
"uneducated heartlanders"?

~~~
ScottBurson
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
I try not to let the anti-vaxxers, hippies, or the Hollywood stars brand whole
areas, or my experience in San Francisco in 1988 with a broken down car and
told to go find a tow truck.

"a lot of education but who have an active antipathy to it."

An yet, I live with people who cherish it right here in rural America. Parents
sacrificed to get kids in college. Doctors are listened to (yep, get your
shots).

Its ok, really. It is socially acceptable to degrade and demonize all us NFL &
MMA watching morons. You can feel superior based on one story, and frankly,
most in these parts don't go in for the trouble to correct you. Its not like
TV treats people much better.

The funny part is the little digs. The NYT article[1] on TV shows by region
claimed folks in rural American liked "Walking Dead" because it is "for people
worried about immigration". I'm more thinking that its a fun show and frankly
most people here can imagine there survival a lot more than those goofballs in
the show.

Oh well. As the graphic floating around Twitter said "you spent 8 years
weaponizing the federal government" then you get this.

I guess, I ask if someone had the same story about say, a racial group, would
you be passing it along on a board like this as an example of why "uneducated
X" would be true?

1)
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-
dynasty-vs-modern-family-television-maps.html)

~~~
nickpsecurity
The attitude you're responding to is a big reason for why Trump had so much
support per David Wong:

[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-
on...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-
about/)

I find his analysis good on top of being entertaining. Echos a lot of what
I've heard living in Red states. Forgot to add that most people around here
are just down-to-earth, working-class people who go to work, raise kids, have
fun with friends, etc. Normal people.

------
CiPHPerCoder
If anyone wants a free idea for a "deal with fake news" startup:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16Kzl...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/13TK_uYpXRc3cODePnfV16KzlIpxD7frAHsPM2Lt8ewE/edit)

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
Hey, cool idea! We could add this to it:
[https://nochio.com/?kind=bad](https://nochio.com/?kind=bad)

------
richcollins
_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
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.

------
bmm01
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.

------
rdtsc
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
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.

------
secfirstmd
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.

------
jayajay
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.

------
pklausler
We have an epistemological crisis. Tech can't fix that.

------
rwhitman
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
Look at companies the fast forward accelerator features on their website
(mobile or would link otherwise).

~~~
rwhitman
Good tip. Thanks ;)

------
eevilspock
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?

------
alexc05
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
Check out the "Congress" app.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightla...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sunlightlabs.android.congress)

~~~
alexc05
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.

------
jessedhillon
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
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?

------
lettercarrier
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.

------
sidlls
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
And of popular votes with no shenanigans on registration or voter ID's.

------
mixedbit
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.

------
1098230213901
Yikes. The idea that any kind of news should be handled by a Ycombinator
startup does not make me comfortable at all.

~~~
cookiecaper
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.

------
grey-area
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
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
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.

~~~
CM30
Thanks for clarifying on this. Such a system definitely needs a way to verify
news, though I'm not quite how a web of trust might be integrated here.

Grouping by geography and interest is definitely needed (Medium/WordPress
style tags can help with both here, especially if users can follow/subscribe
to them).

Making your own newspaper sounds interesting as well. You mean like a sort of
blog or Medium publication? Or a social network type feed?

~~~
grey-area
I think you need the feeds from verified individuals first, then you need some
new way to integrate those resembling neither Twitter nor newspapers but
tailored to specific audiences who know their stuff and can contribute/correct
too. There should be no comments section, the article should be made of
comments with context and commentary. For example some people do stats, some
do a map some do commentary from the ground, and maybe someone ties it
together.

What are your thoughts on the way news should evolve, I'm genuinely really
interested in this area.

------
aclsid
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.

------
ako
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
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.

------
diminoten
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.

------
dandare
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_Da...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Freedom_Day#Tax_Freedom_Day_around_the_world)

~~~
gizmo
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.

~~~
dandare
> numbers by themselves say very little.

They may say little but in the age of "alternative facts" it is more than all
the words.

------
DanBC
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...](http://index.hu/kulfold/2017/02/04/orban_is_a_tool_for_putin_in_his_information_war_against_the_west/)

------
whistlerbrk
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
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.

------
hsavit1
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? )

------
wu-ikkyu
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
"1 + 1 = 2" is true and objective for an infinite time period.

~~~
hyperdunc
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.

------
moflome
@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)?

------
ivankirigin
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.

------
tpetricek
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 :-).

------
6stringmerc
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...

------
RangerScience
Here's a question: What secret sauce do [you think that] we, as software
people, bring to this table?

------
EGreg
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.

------
mtgx
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)

------
stevesearer
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
So it can fail again?

------
msrpotus
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.

------
danbmil99
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.

------
empath75
This seems kind of hypocritical, given what Thiel did to Gawker.

------
disease
I've had shower thoughts about "transparency as a service" before, but putting
together the business case for this has proved difficult.

------
sethbannon
This is what business leadership looks like. Truly inspiring to see the
corporate world embrace civic responsibility like this.

------
aerovistae
This RFS isn't listed under "which RFS are you applying under" on the
application page.

------
julianozen
Really happy to see new jobs on this list. UBI seemed like a lazy way of
addressing job loss

------
sparkzilla
Given Sam Altman's recent statements, will pro-Trump founders be discriminated
against?

~~~
sparkzilla
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
> _given @sama 's statements I don't think there will a culture fit_

Could you summarise those differences?

~~~
sparkzilla
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-
fundra...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/politics/2014/05/obama-fundraises-
tech-stars-hollywood) [3]
[http://blog.samaltman.com/trump](http://blog.samaltman.com/trump)

------
intended
Please please please remember that any tool created can and will be used
against you.

------
soheil
I wonder if Democracy has anything to do with the move to accept ACLU today.

------
pklausler
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
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
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
Don't race bait. The issue was a lot more nuanced than that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_States%29?wprov=sfla1)

~~~
dragonwriter
I'm not race baiting, its really not a lot more nuanced (the popular
alternative explanation is the sales pitch made to New Yorkers to get them to
buy off on the scheme, because we've taken 18th Century campaign propaganda as
unvarnished truth as part of our national cult of veneration of the four ding
fathers), and your source doesn't even address the motivations (well, it
briefly addresses one participants description of the reason of the change
from the Virginia Plan, which had the same salient features and served the
same purpose, to the EC, but that doesn't address why the basic alignment with
Congressional representation underlying both the Virginia Plan and EC was
chosen; the reason, like the 3/5 compromise and the express protection of the
slave trade.in the Constitution, was to overrepresent the slave states and
alleviate their fears that the long term course was toward abolition), only
the mechanics and the history of operations under it.

~~~
dukeluke
I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery. Can
you please provide a legitimate source that proves otherwise?

~~~
dragonwriter
> I provided a source that says there were more considerations than slavery.

You provided a source that does not address the motivations for the particular
feature at issue at all, much less ascribe them to "more considerations than
slavery".

------
fiatjaf
Reputation. Reputation is the problem.

~~~
davidlee1435
Care to extrapolate?

~~~
saalweachter
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.

------
mnemotronic
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.

