Show HN: JuryNow – Get an anonymous instant verdict from 12 real people (jurynow.app)

263 points by sarah-brussels ↗ HN
After 16 years, I have just launched my game JuryNow. Imagine having a truly diverse panel of 12 real people of all ages, far removed from your peer group, around the world who will be able to give you an instant decision on your question 24/7. No commentary, just a verdict between two choices. You can ask a moral dilemma, or a fashion dilemma (you can upload 2 images), you can use JuryNow to give you an independent perspective on a family argument, or a workplace problem, or even a trivial thought. You can also ask a mini political poll and receive global verdict in real time.

It’s anonymous, fast (under 3 minutes), and...when there are more than 13 people playing simultaneously, completely AI-free.

How do you pay for this priceless fun? With JuryDuty. While you wait 3 minutes for your verdict, You answer other people’s questions. There is no commentary, just a binary choice.

You can ask things like:

“Do I have a moral duty to go to my brother’s third wedding? We have no parents?”

“Do you feel guilty when you kill mosquitoes?”

"Should I take away my mother's car keys? She is 84 and had two near misses this month."

As a 58F, I built JuryNow because I wanted to create a truly objective place to get outside opinions that were not from my peer group, but from 12 people in 12 different countries, different ages, professions, cultures, a truly diverse global objective jury with no algorithms.

Would love your feedback! It’s totally free, no sign-up needed for a first play. https://jurynow.app/

if there are fewer than 13 people playing (and it only just launched last week and that was just on Reddit!) then a popup will appear saying your verdict is simulated by AI. But this is just a TEMPORARY feature with the MVP. As soon as there are regular players, it will be permanently dismantled and we will celebrate the power of collective human intelligence!

126 comments

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First congrats on launching, from personal experience that's the hard part.

Are there filters or monitoring for the more violent or maleficent types of things that people have a habit of gravitating towards? Depending on the number of people online and the balance, I could easily see groups jumping on and choosing the negative or harmful choice for lolz

Hello there! Thanks so much for trying it! Indeed, there is a filter to weed out any hate speech, self harm content, there is also a feature for jurors to report comments, and there is the User Agreement! But indeed, this was a big worry for me and put me off trying for a long time!
Neat concept! Although I was a bit surprised at the AI stand-in's finding. I posed the silly argument that "My neighbor's dog refuses to speak French" with the options "Neighbor is culpable" and "I am clearly an idiot": The final decision was 7/5 in my favor! But seriously, this really is a great idea IMO. The jury-duty-while-you-wait feature also seems like a fair trade-off.
Thanks SO much for trying! Honestly, interacting with real people who have tried my game after thinking about it non stop for 16 years is truly exciting! Indeed, the AI part is necessary (well I don't want to say evil but...) in order to show off he game as it will be, and after posting it on Reddit last week, it was working like a dream with real live juries answering! My dream jury will be age 16 - 99, from every continent, every profession and culture...because I do believe the more diverse the jury, the better the verdict!
After thinking about it non stop for 16 years?

This indeed sounds fishy.

Why fishy? I had the idea 16 years ago but lacked any type of expertise or finance to create an app. I've been pestering everyone I could think of ever since and the idea developed and I became more desperate and determined (but still lacking expertise and finance). And last year came across a way to make an app with no coding. I had already tested out the concept during lockdown with family & friends on a live anonymous Zoom with the polling so I knew it would work. Made the MVP on Bubble and here it is. So, what's the fishy part - I genuinely want to know so that I can maybe rewrite it so it doesn't look fishy!
Sorry, but in this age of post-truth anything that sounds unusual is immediately suspect.
> I posed the silly argument that "My neighbor's dog refuses to speak French" with the options "Neighbor is culpable" and "I am clearly an idiot": The final decision was 7/5 in my favor!

People can be trolling. That is the kind of over the top, obviously silly question where I personally might also answer a silly answer. And out of those two the "Neighbor is culpable" is sillyier and funnier.

I mean, if your neighbor’s dog merely cannot speak French, that’s normal. But if it refuses to, that’s just rude.
For Jury, I would give a "skip question" option. I found one relating to Christianity that I had _no_ idea what the "correct" answer would be based on the two options.

I thought clicking "Ask a new question" then going right back into Jury Duty would give me a new question, but I landed on the same one.

I think the asker providing the two valid responses is flawed. It doesn't allow the "jury" to draw their own conclusion, or provides leading answers (one about "is it rude" to eat by themselves when they're socially exhausted in a work context -- one is "yes they would be offended", the other "no they won't be" -- well, they certainly may be but it is your right to eat alone, so the answer could have been "they may, but you need to take care of yourself").

Agreed. There are some questions with answers, neither of which I want to support by selecting.

Might also report skip rate to question asker.

Skipping unanswerable questions would be good for everyone. Any answer would be misleading.

But answer choices should not be qualified by anything, because that systematically creates unanswerable regions.

There should be Context and Question, narrowed down any way the questioner wants. Then just “Yes” or “No” without qualification.

That is what a jury does.

Or: allow answer qualifications, followed by an automatic “None of the above”.

Anyone getting a lot of the latter is getting accurate feedback that the choices they posted were too narrow.

Without either fix, the basic logic of the utility will often be broken. Maybe both? Allow questions to be yes/no, or n choices with NOTA.

Even one of the poster's sample question, the one about the brothers third wedding, is one I would not want to answer with a simple yes/no.
Definitely not answerable. Not without knowing whether it’s a cash bar or an open bar.
Maybe also add a "Needs More Info/Context " option. So two choices which the user provides, and then two system-added options (NOTA/NMI). If the jury votes on the latter two options, allow the user to resubmit the question with edited text/choices.
> Skipping unanswerable questions would be good for everyone. Any answer would be misleading.

I disagree with this. The purpose of the website is to provide answers. If you let people skip questions, you can't guarantee that any given question will ever be answered.

The whole concept here is that you aren't asking people who hold particular credentials. You, Nevermark, should provide your take, regardless of whether you feel it's valid.

However, I'm uncomfortable with the fact that the two answer options are both specified by the user. They should be limited to "yes" or "no", with the meaning of that supplied by the question.

But you can’t provide your take if it isn’t an option.

You can click a choice you don’t agree with, or the other choice you don’t agree with. Neither choice is a service to anyone.

That is the problem of the current site in a nutshell.

Yes, skip would be good, but I'd also advocate an option like "I reject the premise of the question".

In legal contexts yes-or-no answers can work because the case can in theory be boiled down to guilty or not. If there is any flaw with the case, the answer should be not guilty.

But let's take the "do I have a moral duty to..." questions used as examples here for contrast. I'd argue you never had a moral duty to attend your sibling's wedding to begin with. But because the question was asked with a weird modifier like "even if it's their 3rd wedding", any answer you give will be inadequate and will just serve to reinforce the flawed premise. Skipping is not enough in my opinion, because even if communicated to the question asker, it doesn't make it clear whether there as an issue on the answerer's side ("I don't know" / "don't feel qualified") or with the question itself.

These aren't even yes or no questions. I got several where the two options where either "Yes" or "Also, Yes" and "No" or "Also, No"
2nd this. Already getting weirdos posting pictures of two children and asking "this" or "this"...
This is why we can’t have nice things
In the generation of LLMs the correct answer doesn't matter any more. All the herd wants is a answer, so they can move on to the next TikTok video.
Leads me to the conclusion that I don't know what JuryNow is for. The post says it's a game but it's not really. I think that people will use it 'fo real'. But think about a real jury. Typically you will be excused from a jury if you are an expert in a specific field that is important to the case, or if you have a conflict of interest. The jury must be a bit of a blank slate so that both prosecution and defence can give them the facts pertaining to the case, question witnesses, call experts to give testimony when pertinent and then let the jury deliberate together on the result.

If these JuryNow questions are just a snap judgement on a one-shot question, with no opportunity for depth or deliberation between members, then I can see all sorts of potential problems, including the one you pointed out. The person asking the question can also load it in such a way that it leans towards their chosen answer (somewhat like loaded surveys with leading questions). I can certainly see it being used that way in toxic online debates, like a cheap mini survey that gives credence to some opinion. Aren't Reddit "CMV" and "AITA" even a little better since the jury can deliberate with each other online, as would happen in a real case?

This is an alternate form of hotornot.com, more or less.

And you're right, typically an expert would be excused, but you would also have the opportunity to learn what the issue is about to make an 'informed' choice, which in one particular case I could not.

It just gets stuck on the same question with badly formatted boxes and does nothing if I click either of them.
Same here.

And when asking a question, it just keeps telling me to "moderate the question".

My question isn't profane or controversial, so I don't understand what I'm being asked to do.

Same here, I got out of that conundrum by

   cr34t1v3ly
   f0rm4tt1ng
   my
   questions
It seems there is an overly active nanny filter somewhere in the chain.
The big problem is kinda the same as what happens in push polls -- in that they ask misleading or suggestive questions trying to boil the issue down to a good and bad answer.

The reality for many of these questions is pretty complex.

I'm not saying it's not worthwhile, but I'm saying forcing users to choose on some topics aren't black and white.

It's maybe worthwhile getting information on things like people who aren't knowledgeable, people who don't care or have no preference, or people who don't want to answer because the answers are skewed towards one side.

I think you’re correct in that lots of things aren’t black and white, but the reverse is also true. Lots of arguments end up being over-litigated when a black and white answer (even if imperfect) will suffice.

As with most things like this, you get out what you put in. Ask a biased question, and get a biased answer. At some point, the responsibility has to lie with the user that if they want something like this to be interesting and unbiased, they need to think about ways to use it to accomplish that.

Yeah, so add a lawyer/judge option.

Like, someone comes with a problem, great. They suggest 2 options. Lets assume one is super biased. The asker is just fishing for compliments. The jury decides on a third option of 'No, actually, your dilemma is terrible, we need to re-word this'

Then you get some people to recraft answers for it. One person gets to craft one answer, another the other answer. Then a third person to adjudicate that both are acceptable. Then it goes to the jury.

Annnnnnd like the game 'Werewolf', we're expanding this to have all kinds of fun little jobs. Because of course we're going to need a bailiff, and a court reporter, and a stenographer, etc.

For getting this off the ground, yeah, there needs to be a 'send this back' button. But once it does get going, then more fun little jobs will be good to have as updates to keep people interested.

The first question I received had two options that were essentially the same decision worded differently.
I love the concept. One tiny recommendation: on my phone the page both for voting and to see the voting result requires me to scroll. When content wise it could very easily fit within a single screen what is being displayed.

That is mostly a problem with the results page where i wanted to make a screenshot to show it off to my friends but couldn’t.

Also, i see repeated questions? As in i see one question. I vote, the “bar” moves forward, but i see the same question, so i vote again and the same happens.

So whoever was picking up skateboarding again in their 30s, but just suffered a hip injury after a fall. I voted that it is time for you to give up like four times. (Which i stand by as an opinion, but perhaps I shouldn’t be so overrepresented in your jury?)

so sorry about that! there was a bug 3 months ago (when i was just testing it with family and friends) when that happened, and one random question would repeat! And it's just come back tongiht!! (just as I post on hacker news!) i think it's fixed now! And thank you again!
It's still happening.
And still happening
Thanks for that - my post on HN induced a massive spike creating a few unexpected bugs (despite testing it for scalability for nearly 4 months) . Working on it!
THank you for this! That's really useful to hear. As you can see it's a very basic MVP for the moment, but I hope that when there are many more regular users and we can expand it, that the mobile app will be better and more user friendly! But thank you for playing!
Nice idea! I think it would be useful if the jury members could provide context on their decision as well as see the other jurors’ responses.
Congratulations on the launch.

I had two huge yes/no boxes that I thought where missing an image. So I reloaded and lost my question.

I would definitely like a skip question button for jury duty. I also think it’s allowing me to vote multiple times on a single question, potentially when the queue is empty.
Congrats on the launch! Very nice idea! Looking forward when more people are playing so I get answers from real people. While I was waiting, I had to answer the same question multiple times. Is this by design?
Brilliant idea. To make it more accurate:

- Don't force people to participate in jury duty when waiting for jury answer. Many of them will just click random answers.

- Provide "I don't know/Skip" as an answer. Otherwise the options are "Pick a random" and "Logout"

- Allow jury to write text feedback or at least give them a button saying "All provided answers are wrong / NA / Fallacy / ... "

- "your verdict is simulated by AI" if there aren't enough people logged in. Don't do that. I have no interested in that answer.

Cool idea and execution! The use of AI unless there are sufficient humans is a clever way to beat the chicken and egg problem
I love it. Could definitely see more features where you can see the results of the jury questions.
^ this. It gets boring pretty fast being a juror, but it would be a lot more compelling if you could see the verdict.
It would be nice to be able to see the final results of questions I voted on
I asked a question that was 4-0, then suddenly 8 votes came in at once that made the score 4-8, i wonder if that was a UI bug or if the 8 votes were the AI kicking in and they all disagreed with the human answer...
I suspect that was the same user clicking on the same answer several times because he was presented the same question over and over again like I've been getting the same question over and over and over (and over) again.

And over. There seems to be something amiss in the question pipeline.

I'm using Firefox on Android. For me, it showed a question and two answers, but all attempts to select an answer failed.
Same, chrome on Android as well
I'm using Chrome on macbook and had same experience
Same on iPhone Safari
Similar experience on Chrome (Android). Just sits there after making a choice. Is it overloaded?
Look, this is good entertainment, you should own up to that and enough with the noble purpose stuff:

> I built JuryNow because I wanted to create a truly objective place to get outside opinions that were not from my peer group, but from 12 people in 12 different countries, different ages, professions, cultures, a truly diverse global objective jury with no algorithms.

You don't collect demographics, and couldn't verify them anyway, so this game doesn't give insight into those dynamics. And the result is not more objective than a social media consensus.

That doesn't mean it isn't fun and even maybe useful in collecting one's thoughts, so go with that.

Yeah this sounds like making a webgame out of /r/AITA
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Always (3/3 times, anyway) hangs when it's time to return results. Sometimes hangs during jury questions.

Seems like a fun idea, if it worked at all?

Always (3/3 times, anyway) hangs when it's time to return results. Sometimes (1/4 runs) hangs during jury questions. Brave on Android.

Seems like a fun idea, if it worked.

The premise of this app is undermined by the oversimplified implementation.

Truly diverse panel? You have no idea what the diversity is. Far removed from your peer group? You have no idea. "Just a verdict"? Jury duty is not a duty to pronounce judgement. It's a duty deliberate on evidence. There's no evidence, here, and no deliberation.

This is no celebration of collective human intelligence. This is silly and cynical.

I asked “ Toddlers should be allowed to be licensed to operate a motor vehicle.” with yes/no answers.

It errors out with “ Please moderate the content of your question before submitting it.”

Maybe because it relates to children? This is a website that accepts input from the public.

I rephrased the question as:

> Should driving licenses be available regardless of age?

> A: Yes, anyone who can pass the test can drive.

> B: No, only adults who pass a test should drive.

Option B won 10-2.

Yeah, I think you’re right. I don’t think anyone has figured out how to moderate AI well, so many of them seem overly-zealous at this point.
Fun idea, grabbed my attention right away.

As a follow up, I'd guide people on asking questions. More context = better answers.

For example, I joined a jury. The question was "Should I go to Belarus?" That's so vague, it doesn't even feel helpful for me to answer. I would much rather the question have said something like "I've always wanted to go to Belarus, but my rent is also due in a week. I only have enough money for one. Where should I spend my money?"

That at least gives me something to work with and weigh in on.

Like with Reddit, an upvote system or moderation queue can (should?) be added to minimize spam. Questions like that are better asked a magic 8-ball.
Yawn, I can't get past the filter. Boring. Please moderate the content of your question before submitting it Apparently "Furry" is enough to set it off.