A few months ago a young student in my former high school sadly passed away. He badly hurt himself fainting following a vaccination.
I learned about it on some online article, and was immediately struck by the comments on the page. It was just a battlefield confronting pro and antivax. No matter how little everyone knew about the story, they would all just blindly fight to defend some point of view.
I am not emotionally attached to many things, but the way our society has become so polarized on every single subject to the point that we can't have a discussion or have an opinion of our own makes me feel so angry and hopeless...
This might be the biggest obstacle to growth as a society.
So for some time now I have been thinking about a way to change that. I am convinced that the solution is to expose people to facts and ideas they aren't already used to.
In this optic I created a simple tool for people to add nuances to articles. The idea is to allow people to add any facts, views or thoughts about an article that would contribute to getting a broader sense of the story.
The goal is not to erase bias, convictions or feelings. But by exposing people to the full picture, I hope to help them have a better sense of the world.
If this is something you care about, you can checkout the url and start contributing now. On the homepage you can simply paste the url of an article and it will allow you to add nuances. Nuances can be nuanced too !
Hope you will make something great out of this tool. I will gladly listen to your feedbacks.
So how is this going to be different from existing comment system that you didn't like? What's the secret sauce which will transform existing "battlefield" comments into nuanced view of broader sense of the story?
The algorithm that puts content forward will be different from typical recommendation systems. You won't see nuances because they please your brain but because they have been recognized as factual and contributing to the understanding of the full story.
If you encounter some misleading article you can simply paste the url in the input box on the homepage, it will then open a page where you can add nuances to this article for other people to see.
Thank you for the feedback, I am working on it !
There aren't only two options though.
It can be self-moderated by the community. A user who posts insightful nuances will have a bigger say in what is considered insightful in the future. Sort of like a PageRank for reliability.
It's a simple tool to enrich an article with nuances. You see an article that seems misleading or incomplete ? You just paste the url in the input box and add the nuances (bits of information) that will help understand the article better.
For now this is done on the website I created, but I am also working on a browser extension that would allow to see and add those nuances directly on the article's webpage.
10 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 28.2 ms ] threadI learned about it on some online article, and was immediately struck by the comments on the page. It was just a battlefield confronting pro and antivax. No matter how little everyone knew about the story, they would all just blindly fight to defend some point of view.
I am not emotionally attached to many things, but the way our society has become so polarized on every single subject to the point that we can't have a discussion or have an opinion of our own makes me feel so angry and hopeless...
This might be the biggest obstacle to growth as a society.
So for some time now I have been thinking about a way to change that. I am convinced that the solution is to expose people to facts and ideas they aren't already used to.
In this optic I created a simple tool for people to add nuances to articles. The idea is to allow people to add any facts, views or thoughts about an article that would contribute to getting a broader sense of the story.
The goal is not to erase bias, convictions or feelings. But by exposing people to the full picture, I hope to help them have a better sense of the world.
If this is something you care about, you can checkout the url and start contributing now. On the homepage you can simply paste the url of an article and it will allow you to add nuances. Nuances can be nuanced too !
Hope you will make something great out of this tool. I will gladly listen to your feedbacks.
Thanks,
Paul
If it is moderated, then it will succumb to the same pressures and problems as every other online community.
I wish you well, but we're not equipped to cope with the barrage of news, stories, and propaganda we are now subjected to.
I agree; there are more options than my imagination can muster, and I hope you find a successful one.