alt.hn

2/12/2026 at 6:23:20 PM

Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

 https://pol.is/home2

by mefengl

2/13/2026 at 3:47:11 PM

Thirty years ago I was enthusiastic about what we now call liquid democracy. Elders, to whom I spoke that lived through WWII, saw dynamic+direct democracy as extremely dangerous. I now share their opinion.

To have a healthy world, we need to start with democratic engagement on every block, of every district in every city, in all counties of every province, in all nations across every continent of our shared planet. Critically, it must be completely human mediated, even if it is daily effort for most people everywhere. This is how we must spend our "great AI productivity boost".

I am responding to nested comments; this is not meant to diminish the importance of the linked effort.

by clcaev

2/13/2026 at 5:55:39 PM

I'm of a similar mindset... pure/liquid democracy is literally rule by mob. It can only amplify choices made by feeling over substance.

As an ideal, I've always favored a libertarian mindset... my freedom should extend so far as it doesn't impede on another's rights. Which is a really broad interpretation... I think the further we allow govt to get away from that, the worse things get over time. Freedom is important.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 8:26:00 PM

> I'm of a similar mindset... pure/liquid democracy is literally rule by mob.

Rule by people is literally rule by derogatory term for people? The “literally” seems to suggest that this is supposed to communicate more than a personal feeling towards a subject. And yet.

by keybored

2/13/2026 at 9:03:32 PM

What is the underlying problem and what are the potential solutions?

> saw dynamic+direct democracy as extremely dangerous

Are you saying that humans, on average, are bad/harmful/evil? Or that they commit to decisions without thinking them through and act on emotions instead of reason?

Because if the first, then making democracy indirect or otherwise limited should not help.

So I believe it is the second. Then the question becomes either how to get people to vote more rationally or how to weight votes by rationality. The second options is not well explored.

by martin-t

2/12/2026 at 8:41:03 PM

What are some strategies a platform like this can take against spam or influence bots? Tying real life identities to users would certainly limit that(though identity theft and account selling could still happen), but that adds friction to joining, poses security risks, and many people might feel less comfortable putting their opinions openly online where backlash could impact real life.

by goda90

2/12/2026 at 11:59:12 PM

eID is the obvious answer here in Europe. Right now it's kinda scattered with different providers, but I believe EU is working on a more universal protocol. Unfortnately there are rumors it will require official Google/Apple play stores, unrooted devices, and all that it does today already.

But it should be treated as a relatively safe ID, it's even used for voting. If you feel uncomfortable, just have one device for eID, and one for everything else.

I think it's a great tool if we want to implement some sort of liquid democracy feature.

by INTPenis

2/13/2026 at 12:32:23 AM

So a local ballot box.

Host a platform like this at city hall, county building, capitol building, schools.

Only a human can access a terminal. Have humans monitor ingress/egress.

A more generalized solution that solves the specific problem inherent to all these digital ones.

by longfacehorrace

2/13/2026 at 11:45:40 AM

Makes it hard for those with disabilities, overbearing work hours and family commitments, folks in the most need to have their voice heard?

by sellmesoap

2/13/2026 at 6:00:03 PM

And this is different from current town halls how? If you have an important issue to you, there are ways to be heard, and they aren't always convenient.

This is how representative democracy is meant to work... you work/talk with your local representatives who work as part of a larger body on your behalf. Part of the problem in the US is we stopped growing the House of Representatives, which should be about 4-5x the size that it currently is, so you have much closer local representatives.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 8:18:36 PM

My experience with my local town hall is that they are realestate developers looking to green light their nepo-projects, they don't even know the basic nomenclature of a committee. And when they want to borrow $90,000,000 to make a survailance center at a bad interest rate for a population of ~100,000 and the locals lose their shit over it, the first thing they try to do is ditch the process that allowed the people to petition to say no to the project. The last city manager and then the CFO -> inturm manager have been fired for inapproprate use of city funds (or being a different skin color in one case, I can't tell from the news reports.) And town hall meetings are held adjacent to a rough homeless hangout and an elevator or two deep for those with mobility issues. So I have hope that things like polis can help, my local system needs a flush out. Bots are a scourage for stuff like this as well, so deffinetly a complex problem space!

by sellmesoap

2/13/2026 at 7:00:11 AM

If it requires me to leave the house, that increase in friction will mean I will vote maybe on 1/100th what I would otherwise vote on. I suspect pretty much everyone is the same

by malux85

2/13/2026 at 4:05:45 PM

This is true of methods that don't require you to leave the house as well. Internet forums of all types are dominated by frequent users (by definition). People who are doing other things (working, raising families, living with disabilities that make participation difficult) are under-represented. Most of us just want someone with culturally normal values and competency to take care business. Many democratic systems do not select for people with culturally normal values and competency, unfortunately.

by theroncross

2/13/2026 at 4:41:54 PM

In my experience, neighborhood and municipal governance often works unreasonably well with life-long public servants who, even if not be the most brilliant of us, diligently work every day like the rest of us.

Technology must assist local, bottom-up governance, rather than being supplanted.

by clcaev

2/13/2026 at 5:23:57 PM

"Culturally normal values" is such a crazily loaded phrase. I personally don't have a strong desire to see people with culturally normal values be in charge, since, as far as I can tell, the "normal" person is neither very smart nor very thoughtful.

by nathan_compton

2/13/2026 at 7:01:05 PM

It's "culturally normal" for first worlders like us to thoughtlessly dump production of material needs on 12 year old sweatshop workers in Asia.

You have a point but I am not sure it is the one you intended.

by longfacehorrace

2/13/2026 at 9:03:01 PM

The lack of ambition is terrifying.

by econ

2/13/2026 at 8:57:39 PM

I really want this to be as simple as forwarding the user through a gov website and receiving a hash on a webhook. All I really want to know is that it is a citizen and the same hash as last time

by econ

2/12/2026 at 9:17:48 PM

We really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentralized manner, proof of citizenship is much harder, and in my opinion this is one of (the few) things the government should really do.

by acgourley

2/12/2026 at 10:44:48 PM

What about Zero-Knowledge Identity? Use zero knowledge proofs to prove that I have an eID without actually providing my identity.

by worldsayshi

2/13/2026 at 2:27:58 AM

EFF has a good write-up about zero-knowledge: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-...

> What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need or limiting the number of times they request your age over time. They don’t prevent websites or applications from collecting other kinds of observable personally identifiable information like your IP address or other device information while interacting with them.

by samename

2/13/2026 at 11:08:20 AM

The arguments they make is a good example of "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good".

If we allow incumbents to make photo age verification and upload of ID to third-parties to be the solution, we will have a much worse solution.

by notTooFarGone

2/13/2026 at 11:15:59 AM

Exactly. And I do think that a world where zkp ids are taken for granted is one where the issues they point to will be more surmountable than today.

by worldsayshi

2/13/2026 at 8:41:11 AM

Interesting. While that is true I don't see how it's an argument against. Over-asking + ZKP certainly seems superior to over-asking + without ZKP. Without ZKP in a world where you constantly need to identify yourself you have absolutely no privacy.

And going forward I think that any communication without establishing some kind of trust boundary will just be noise.

by worldsayshi

2/12/2026 at 11:09:42 PM

Something like a cert chain, but it would need to be both simple to use and secure. Those two requirements are greatly at odds with each other.

by frogperson

2/12/2026 at 11:38:34 PM

Yeah one reason I think the government has to offer this is usability. While you can imagine a purely p2p protocol between cypherpunks, for everyone else there needs to be a way to social workers, DMV staff, etc can deal with edge cases (such as your id being stolen and needing a reset). Furthermore it helps if it's super illegal to tamper with this network (consider how rare check fraud is, despite being easy).

by acgourley

2/13/2026 at 2:21:31 AM

Check fraud is easy to commit but not easy to get away with while also benefiting financially.

It's also illegal to steal things but that happens much more frequently because it's often fairly easy to get away with.

by fc417fc802

2/12/2026 at 11:32:29 PM

Yes that's the idea, once you have the soul-bound eID the ZK part is trivial, but the eID with the guarantees I outlined is not at all trivial.

by acgourley

2/12/2026 at 10:13:27 PM

Either I'm not sure what you mean by soul, or you are all-in on dualism.

by Lerc

2/12/2026 at 10:19:27 PM

Sorry the term of art is really soulbound identity right now, I use POS but it's less common. Definitions vary but I say a useful system must allow people to endorse statements with evidence they are a) alive b) not able to be represented by more than one identity (id is linked to your entire soul, not a persona or facet of your being) c) a kind of socially recognized person (human in the expected case)

and then layer on citizenship on top if you want to use this for polling, voting, etc.

by acgourley

2/13/2026 at 12:22:28 AM

How would this work considering that the soul is an entirely fictional concept?

by protocolture

2/13/2026 at 2:53:25 PM

“Empirically unprovable” and “fictional” are not synonymous.

by FunHearing3443

2/12/2026 at 11:22:21 PM

Do you believe you are capable of doing that yourself?

by Lerc

2/12/2026 at 11:33:10 PM

All you have to do is flip the tortoise back over.

> You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it’s crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?

by throwup238

2/13/2026 at 1:19:30 AM

The point of the test is to see if the subject has had life experience enough that they could restrain their own empathy.

Wanting to flip the tortoise back over was why he failed the test.

by Lerc

2/12/2026 at 10:34:39 PM

Worldcoin tried to solve that. Any solution for this will be similarly creepy.

by nerdsniper

2/12/2026 at 10:53:28 PM

The casual ginger hate is disgusting. smh.

It's funny to think of how the US government is effectively a decentralized web of trust system. Building one that works, that has sufficient network effects, auditability, accountability, enforcability, so that when things are maliciously exploited, or people make mistakes, your system is robust and resilient - these are profound technically difficult challenges.

The US government effectively has to operate IDs under a web of trust, with 50 units sitting at the top, and a around 3,000 county sub-units, each of which are handling anywhere from 0 to 88 sub-units of towns, cities, other community structures.

Each community then deals with one or more hospitals, one or more doctors in each hospital, and every time a baby is born, they get some paperwork filled out, filed upward through the hierarchy of institutions, shared at the top level between the massive distributed database of social security numbers, and there are laws and regulations and officials in charge of making sure each link in the chain is where it needs to be and operates according to a standard protocol.

At any rate - ID is hard. You've gotta have rules and enforcement, accountability and due process, transparency and auditing, and you end up with something that looks a bit like a ledger or a blockchain. Getting a working blockchain running is almost trivial at this point, or building on any of the myriad existing blockchains. The hard part is the network incentives. It can't be centralized - no signing up for an account on some website. Federated or domain based ID can be good, but they're too technical and dependent on other nations and states. The incentives have to line up, too; if it's too low friction and easy, it'll constantly get exploited and scammed at a low level. If it's too high friction and difficult, nobody will want to bother with it.

Absent a compelling reason to participate, people need to be compelled into these ID schemes, and if they're used for important things, they need a corresponding level of enforcement, and force, backing them up, with due process. You can't run it like a gmail account, because then it's not reliable as a source of truth, and so on.

I don't know if there's a singular, technological fix, short of incorruptible AGI that we can trust to run things for us following an explicit set of rules, with protocols that allow any arbitrary independent number of networks and nodes and individuals to participate.

by observationist

2/12/2026 at 11:48:42 PM

> they need a corresponding level of enforcement

Yes 100%, that's why the government needs to offer it, make tampering a serious offense, and dynamically defend its integrity from attackers.

> incorruptible AGI

Not a lot of alpha in planning for scenarios where we get that

by acgourley

2/13/2026 at 5:51:47 PM

I'm also somewhat curious about how "hateful content" is defined... I mean having a serious discussion on policies around children in schools and sport regarding trans issues has been labelled in some circles as hateful content if it doesn't blindly support the most progressive views.

I'm just using this as a specific example. Not saying that there aren't hateful sentiments or people behind comments or positions... only that depending on how such policies are interpreted you can't even debate sensitive issues.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 8:33:14 PM

Sigh... you know there's single digits number of trans athletes in the entire NCAA. The fact that this is even discussed at all is absurd given what else is going on in the country. Yes, intelligent people can have a conversation about it but even if you think it's a problem it's problem #43,948 on the list. Let's solve the other 43,947 problems first. It's really hard to believe people when they say it's not about bigotry. And it in every instance I've encountered people talking about it I would easily, and correctly, classify it has "hateful".

by thinkingtoilet

2/12/2026 at 11:14:51 PM

The invite-tree they discuss is likely an effective measure. It provides a way of tracking back influxes of bots to responsible pre-existing account(s) and banning them too. And if someone is responsible for inviting many of the pre-existing accounts them too... Making the game of whac-a-mole winnable.

I'm assuming it's equivalent to lobste.rs implementation: https://lobste.rs/about#invitations

The cost of this is adding a ton of friction to joining.

by gpm

2/13/2026 at 11:09:38 AM

There are so many things here that can work:

- Not having just upvote or downvote, but upvote as funny or insightful (slashdot)

- Not allowing to vote or comment until some karma has been reached (new accounts inflame topics and disappear later, having influenced).

- Invite only so one can block while chain of accounts.

- Not allowing to vote or comment every day or every hour, but randomly (more difficult for bots)

- Automatically downvoting posts with grammatical or low-effort errors.

- Having a way to allow replies only from the account you are answering to (so that bots do not switch places while moving the topic).

- Post history public (on reddit it can be made private, so a bot is posting hate in many communities and one cannot cross-check)

- Some sort of graph of statistics of accounts that comment together.

- Paying a small amount as friction for bots (linked to card, etc.)

I guess with AI there would be even more. These are some from the top of my head.

by mejutoco

2/13/2026 at 11:16:31 AM

Slashdot didn't allow you to vote and comment on the same topic. (If you voted, then commented, your votes on the post were rescinded.)

by rwmj

2/13/2026 at 11:20:50 AM

> Automatically downvoting posts with grammatical or low-effort errors.

So allow only LLM generated posts?

by nottorp

2/13/2026 at 11:22:34 AM

People are capable of writing correctly. Source: your post.

If someone cannot be bothered, why should we bother to read what they have to say? I think it is a good signal.

EDIT: plus it is not an allow or not allow. The more errors the more downvoted, so it is a small adjustment.

by mejutoco

2/13/2026 at 9:22:43 PM

You shouldn't care about presentation but others will.

I think an llm approach could be good. You make suggestions in however insane language and it converts the format to something boring and mundane accepted by all clients.

Some people are to brief, some elaborate more than necessary.

by econ

2/13/2026 at 12:23:19 PM

Of course, that excludes 90% of word plays.

by nottorp

2/12/2026 at 10:36:57 PM

For many purposes, we need anonymous authentication. I haven't heard about much innovation on that and similar privacy fronts in awhile.

Off the top of my head, a possible method is a proxy or two or three, each handling different components of authentication and without knowledge of the other components. They return a token with validity properties (such as duration, level of service). All the vendor (e.g., Polis) would know is the validity of the token.

I'm sure others have thought about it more ...

by mmooss

2/13/2026 at 4:23:13 AM

You could do it now with OpenID SSO that only takes passkeys. The downside is that losing the passkey would lose the account. The problem is that OpenID leaks the authenticating sites to authentication site.

The problem is that lots of sites need/want email address. So would need system for anonymous email, and that would either need real email to forward, or way to read email.

by ianburrell

2/12/2026 at 10:47:05 PM

I mean I can prove with a zero-knowledge-proof that have solved a Sudoku puzzle without actually giving away the solution so this seems possible?

by worldsayshi

2/12/2026 at 11:40:48 PM

the spam/bot problem is real but i think the more subtle challenge is keeping quality high even with all real humans. most online discussions degrade not because of bots but because the incentive structure rewards reactive emotional responses over thoughtful ones.

what's interesting about polis's approach is that it surfaces agreement clusters instead of amplifying disagreement. most comment systems optimize for engagement, which in practice means conflict. if you optimize for "where do people actually agree despite appearing to disagree" you get a completely different dynamic.

the invite-tree idea someone mentioned below is interesting for the same reason: it's not just that it keeps bots out, it's that it creates social accountability. you're more thoughtful when your reputation is linked to the people you invited. same principle as why small communities tend to self-moderate better than large ones.

by renato_shira

2/13/2026 at 1:02:44 AM

I'd like to add to your point that private torrent trackers have had invite tree systems for awhile, and usually if your invitee breaks a rule, you get in trouble as well, so you are encouraged to only invite people you trust. The system has worked well for a long time, and some of these communities still thrive because of the trust that is built.

by kipukun

2/13/2026 at 3:45:03 AM

It might be an unpopular idea, but I think being somewhat liberal with doling out timeouts and bans for inflammatory/reactionary/overemotional posting would do a lot of good, too. It strongly crystalizes community norms and sends a message that this is a space to engage with the higher functioning portions of your brain instead of letting your amygdala and dopamine pathways take the wheel.

Edit: Why is parent comment flagged/dead? Doesn’t seem that controversial?

by cosmic_cheese

2/12/2026 at 7:20:46 PM

Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? That seems to be a pretty big problem in many places.

I think I can find some common ground with people who have different views on corporate taxation if we both go over some data and economics and think about it and consider various tradeoffs. Especially if we chat face to face to avoid any 'keyboard warrior' effects.

I probably can't find much common ground with people that believe that condensed water vapor formed by the passage of airplanes is actually a mind control device from the planet Zargon.

by davidw

2/12/2026 at 8:41:22 PM

IIUC, this was a finding when they ran the Polis experiments in Taiwan: when you map the arguments of the different sides, there are actually large areas of agreement. In other words, the median person who disagrees with you is a "potential common ground" guy, not a "planet Zargon" guy.

by Taikonerd

2/13/2026 at 7:28:11 AM

What I don't understand about Polis though is who is creating these less biased polls full of unbiased positions that people can vote on? It takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom to even formulate a question that isn't tainted by layers and layers of political innuendo. You can't just put something like "Do you believe in the rights of the unborn child?" into a system like this and expect quality outcomes.

I guess the theory is that you put the entire spectrum of positions on the line which allows fully biased positions on each end to exist. Then biased people on both ends will vote on slightly less and less biased positions that they still agree with and you'll see the true shared positions. But I still think that if you don't have a perfectly equal number of positions to vote on for each side you'll end up with the same problem we already have in society, people are being given biased questions not necessarily by strength but by amount. Therefore they will subconsciously and consciously conclude that the world wants them to be more towards the position that had more questions presented.

by Nathanba

2/13/2026 at 3:29:59 PM

Many (most?) issues don't fit on a single dimension. Using your example, people hold positions that include "Absolutely!", "Yes, but also the rights of the mother.", "Yes, but I won't impose my beliefs on others.", "No, but I don't think people who feel otherwise should be forced to pay for abortions through taxes.", and many others.

In addition to the problem with biased questions you note, there are often built in assumptions that make yes or no responses impossible.

by patrickmay

2/13/2026 at 12:23:56 AM

I find that the median person who disagrees with me, actually agrees with me, but I accidentally triggered their social media PTSD and they flagged me as an enemy because I didnt slavishly polish their preferred set of boots.

by protocolture

2/13/2026 at 7:39:29 AM

That too is a major problem, in theory you could be posing fine questions but they are already politically or socially tainted so it's game over before it even started, you will get zero actual new thought from the person you asked.

by Nathanba

2/13/2026 at 10:21:04 AM

Trouble is, the "large areas of agreement" can be pretty superficial. You can probably find broad agreement across the entire political spectrum about "cutting government waste", but it turns out that who is tasked with doing this and the low level details of what gets cut matter a lot more than the basic principle.

by notahacker

2/13/2026 at 11:17:48 AM

> how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"?

People are free to believe what they want but when a platform is overrun with bots spewing this 24/7 (reddit, for example) we are giving a platform to those lies/falsehoods.

IMO that is the issue, we should make it difficult for those lies to spread, but the incentives are not aligned with engagement. If the platform provides measures to disincentivise spam, hate spread with low-effort there will be less of it. Just like spam. And less people tricked because of it.

by mejutoco

2/12/2026 at 9:19:42 PM

> Interesting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"?

I think the first step is always to separate a fact (I.e., X happened), from why did X happen. Afterwards, you move towards the steps that could prevent X from happening, or reactive protocols to X that minimize the chance of conspiracy theories, etc.

Of course it will not work with all, but, in my opinion, with enough of “alternative facts” lovers that it will be sufficient.

by reliabilityguy

2/12/2026 at 10:19:20 PM

I don't understand "why did X happen?" presupposes X happened. We seem to be at the level of X pretty obviously did not happen but people believe it did.

by Lerc

2/12/2026 at 10:55:08 PM

Ah, I see what you mean. I my personal experience, those that believe in “alternative facts” typically believe in different narratives around the same thing and confuse the narrative with the fact.

For things that did not happen? Yeah. I am not sure there is something that can be done beyond pointing out inconsistencies in their reasoning and proves. However, typically, those things are about believes that mascaras as rational reasoning, and there is nothing you can do about beliefs.

Remember, after WW2 there were people in Germany who did not believe the Allies that Hitler and Co did terrible things.

by reliabilityguy

2/12/2026 at 10:49:50 PM

I go over the four ways to disagree with someone on my blog, but the question is, when is it material? If I think the sun revolves around the Earth, unless I'm the navigator of the ship you're on, and my wrong beliefs are going to ship wreck all of us, how does it affect you?

by fragmede

2/12/2026 at 8:48:15 PM

The x.com/twitter "Community Notes" feature is based on this algorithm, BTW.

(Disclaimer: I'm on the board of the org that runs Polis.)

by jph00

2/12/2026 at 10:24:47 PM

[dead]

by IhateAI

2/12/2026 at 11:50:05 PM

I don't see anything but an inactive account on that link.

by jackbravo

2/13/2026 at 12:12:28 AM

It's not meant to be a link, rather "X (formerly Twitter)"

by kwk1

2/13/2026 at 5:01:28 AM

you thought they had the username twitter?

by ryanmcbride

2/12/2026 at 7:33:13 PM

Man the name really threw me for a minute. Polis is the correct spelling for police in my native Swedish and I got through the first 2 paragraphs wondering what any of this has to do with law enforcement.

Then it dawned on me.

Edit to add: I think the white and blue theme helps. Those are police colours in Sweden...

by amarant

2/13/2026 at 8:58:08 AM

The name must be taken from Greek.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis

by WCSTombs

2/13/2026 at 9:07:19 AM

unsurprisingly, the word police comes from polis

by croisillon

2/12/2026 at 10:52:33 PM

(Jared) Polis is the current governor of Colorado, so I was also confused but in a different direction.

by kej

2/12/2026 at 8:42:30 PM

Ditto Scotland.

by afandian

2/12/2026 at 10:38:02 PM

Society is not ready for an AI world: any platform that does not guarantee anonymity will be of limited utility for social discourse in a world lurching towards authoritarianism, and any platform that does guarantee anonymity can no longer reliably distinguish human from ai; not that that should matter when it's ideas that are being debated.

But the bigger issue is the control of money: hierarchical institutions disintermediate workers from the way the fruits of their labor are put to use. Money spent or paid in taxes is aggregated and misused by third parties against the wishes and against the providers of that money. Essentially, your labor is used against you. This is true regardless of where someone is on the political spectrum.

A platform for debate or voting isn't going to resolve this fundamental problem.

by ninjagoo

2/12/2026 at 10:46:18 PM

I agree on the importance of anonymity for social discourse. But if a tool/platform like Polis is some equivalent of a local 'town hall meeting', where there is no anonymity (and you as a citizen publicly appear, state your name, make your argument, etc), then why is lack of anonymity a threat in this specific context?

by thoughtpeddler

2/13/2026 at 1:38:06 AM

Because town hall meetings don't work in an authoritarian world.

by ninjagoo

2/12/2026 at 10:42:10 PM

I believe we can solve both anonymity + proof-of-humanity using zero-knowledge proofs that act as intermediary between a trusted identity provider and the service provider. I.e. you get a digital id but you use it to generate proofs rather than handing out your identity.

Right?

by worldsayshi

2/12/2026 at 10:54:27 PM

Related: https://www.proofofpersonhood.how/

by Zaskoda

2/12/2026 at 11:19:45 PM

> PoP makes it possible to prove "I am unique" without giving up privacy.

Ah, very nice! I have been trying to figure out if this was possible!

by worldsayshi

2/13/2026 at 5:18:50 PM

The algorithm used here is ring verifiable random functions, which only provides plausible deniability, nothing more.

Proof of personhood would require proof that every entity in the ring was an actual person.

by judahmeek

2/12/2026 at 11:48:34 PM

Is that even feasible? Thinking of it like security certificates for humans. Can there really be anonymity if a cert signature chain has to be trusted? CAs and intermediaries can always trace certs back?

by ninjagoo

2/12/2026 at 10:58:47 PM

And who is going to be a trusted identity provider in authoritarian regimes?

by warkdarrior

2/12/2026 at 11:12:20 PM

Yeah, I mean that is definitely an additional hard nut to crack.

I also think it has potential (partial) solutions. I'm thinking that there are many ways to prove identity information. You could use something like tlsnotary to prove that you can log in to a certain web page (i.e. you are an employee of corp X). You can prove that you know someone that know person Y given certain encrypted data.

I just think that Zero-knowledge-proofs are very under explored. As I understand it, and I am not an expert - more or less anything that can be proven algorithmically can be turned into a zkp. Any question that algorithmically can have a yes or no answer can also avoid leaking further information if handled in a zkp way.

I just learned like a few basic examples of zkp and I realized that so many proofs can be made this way.

by worldsayshi

2/13/2026 at 1:47:06 AM

Maybe the solution is to accept that anonymity comes with the trade-off that bots will also participate. The dependency then is on effective moderation.

Perhaps effective moderation is achievable today through, dare I say it - bots? They certainly seem capable of it now, perhaps more effectively than the average human?

by ninjagoo

2/13/2026 at 4:23:34 AM

It needs to be globally distributed and not tied to any one government. Worldcoin but not Worldcoin.

by chickensong

2/14/2026 at 1:07:34 AM

Either that or a protocol that is as reusable as email that can facilitate a variety of identity proof and trust mechanisms.

by worldsayshi

2/13/2026 at 9:38:38 PM

AIs in bunkers rigged to explode.

by econ

2/13/2026 at 12:51:59 PM

Haha oof, the one day I wasn't checking hackernews, my obsession project comes up :)

I'm working on a Google Maps for human perspectives, that extends polislike vote data: https://patcon.github.io/polislike-human-cartography-prototy...

A presentation on my old prototype, describing my philosophy behind extending the tool: (the first 15 min gives the gist) https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSqo_m4cL2Q&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoFrV...

And a shorter video talking about plotting routes through "perspective space": every route is a chain of people with the most continuous chain of values (for e.g., from progressive left to alt right)... what might it be to host an event or conversation with the members of such a trajectory through perspective space? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-SMbs1reE&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoF...

by patcon

2/13/2026 at 12:54:51 PM

And I'm also building a research tool for more easily mining such data for democratic insight: https://patcon.github.io/valency-anndata/

I believe we can make maps of reactions [to information] on topics of societal impact, and we can literally make a new "National Weather Service" for helping as many people as possible understand the storms we live within, in a near instantaneous and fully enfranchised way.

by patcon

2/12/2026 at 7:05:00 PM

More at https://compdemocracy.org/ and source code at https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis.

by eikenberry

2/13/2026 at 6:07:12 AM

It's pretty frustrating when something advertises itself as open source and yet there's no link to its source to be found. There's even a footer that says "Polis is powered by support from people like you. Contribute here." But it's just a financial donation link.

by Defletter

2/12/2026 at 11:31:20 PM

What I am more interested in seeing, hopefully, in the future is the ability to cast citizens' votes directly on any matter, act, bill, etc., and get rid of the representatives in parliament/congress/etc. It is more transparent that way, and end lobbying with all the corruption it has. No more traditional voting for a "person" anymore and relying on trust; rather, you trust no one and vote directly. We have the proper digital infrastructure and technology to make it happen. We are far more connected than we were back when these ancient processes were created. That way, it's truly the power of the people compared to the power of whoever can get the wealthy to support their campaign. If this won't work "because a lot of people are ignorant!" then you put effort into educating them. Otherwise, it also means our current democracies are nothing but a charade to fool the public with a false illusion of choices.

by tamimio

2/13/2026 at 3:48:18 PM

> and get rid of the representatives

>and end lobbying with all the corruption it has.

You never get rid of these people, you just move who they are.

Now Mr Beast and whoever is slipping him cash is your political representative because of the power of their parasocial relationships.

>"because a lot of people are ignorant!" then you put effort into educating them.

This won't work, not because people are ignorant, but because of entropy.

As a human you can only learn so much so fast and you don't have time to learn everything that a government knows or does. You're going to remain ignorant on most complicated things because that's the default state of the universe. People with money/power still have more time and effort available to push the vote their way, and they will target the education first (much like right now).

by pixl97

2/13/2026 at 10:24:41 PM

You can do diplomas for different parts of government and assign ranks to voters based on their familiarity with the topic. Then you can share the voting results by how informed people are. If I don't know much about the topic buy those who do say we should go to war with the martians it might change my opinion.

You can also use it as a trigger to create media attempting to objectively inform the oblivious if they drift to far away. These should be large expensive efforts with not-propaganda at the top of the agenda. Show the giant weapon the martians are building in earth orbit.

You can also keep the representatives as the default vote. That way, if their financial backers or those blackmailing them try to sneak in their usual bullshit you can log in and change the vote.

If the representatives picks their own representative anyone can be your representative. You can at any time change your vote to your mum and ignore politics

I also envision each law requiring a minimum number of yes votes to be activated and a minimum number of no to deactivate.

If there are few enough yes votes and enough no's the law is deleted. You can change your vote at any time.

Have some algorithm to implement the changes over time so that Mr beast has to make many months of effort.

Government employees are to work on new law proposals to replace the least popular ones. If they fail to read the room hard enough first their salary is reduced and eventually they get fired algorithmically. If they get it right often enough we increase their salary endlessly but they still get fired if they get it wrong repeatedly. If they don't know anymore new courses and new diplomas are created.

I also want to give the voter a monthly payment for each diploma they got. Asking people to do important work for free makes no sense. How much is up to the voters.

by econ

2/13/2026 at 12:38:14 AM

Regardless of ignorance, people don't vote even every year or two, because it's inconvenient, they're busy, and they become cynical after months of negative campaigning on both sides. We need "assigned voting" where you can assign your vote to another person, who then can assign their votes to another person, etc, creating a chain of voting hierarchy such that a few people control large numbers of aggregate votes, and in most cases that's enough to decide things and get things done. People can always un-assign/re-assign their votes (shifting the political landscape), or even override their assigned vote on a particular bill, if they disagree with their "elected" representative.

by saulpw

2/13/2026 at 2:08:35 AM

You're describing Liquid Democracy[1]. Seems challenging to implement but definitely an interesting idea.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

by johnecheck

2/13/2026 at 3:37:53 AM

I didn't know this had a name, thank you so much!

by saulpw

2/12/2026 at 8:48:33 PM

This is incredibly cool tech built on an idea of participatory, consensus-building democracy that I want to believe is possible and sustainable.

by jamesbelchamber

2/12/2026 at 10:22:30 PM

Are there any details on how they managed organised bad actors?

The moderation stuff seems targeted mostly on keeping a lid on trolls and tempers.

by Lerc

2/12/2026 at 7:56:51 PM

These are the genre of consensus tools I would like to see used in SM. Just imagine: a system that actually helps people exchange atomic, clear arguments and come to an informed consensus.

The internet could have really been a great tool to bring humanity together, if it was structured in that way for the common good. Instead we get SM where mud-battles and the resulting polarization are part of the perverse business model: engagement drives revenue, and there's no better way to keep people engaged than with a loop of extreme emotions and comments shouting the same shallow arguments at each other all over again without any meaningful progress.

Only imagine how quiet those platforms would become if discussions were actually structured for consensus instead of dissensus. I mean, yeah, a huge win for society - but a big loss of money, distraction and control for Elon, Zuckerberg and their BS billionaire friends.

by mentalgear

2/12/2026 at 10:40:13 PM

> atomic ... arguments

Why is that especially valuable, according to your vision?

by mmooss

2/12/2026 at 8:55:16 PM

SM?

by chrisweekly

2/12/2026 at 9:03:11 PM

“Social media”

by kaveh_h

2/12/2026 at 9:14:31 PM

How does it defend against corruption by the folks operating it? I'm especially thinking of biased seed statements, source bias, and burial of important items in irrelevant gublish.

by dsr_

2/13/2026 at 12:20:30 AM

I tried to see a demo after signing up, but that's probably for the other side of things. I was curious how this compares to what I submitted today as others said it's similar to some government stuff

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774

by ddtaylor

2/13/2026 at 7:15:54 AM

What are the use cases for Polis? Can it be used for city planning? It is a complex task with a lot of compronises to design towns.

by thomasfl

2/13/2026 at 10:16:03 AM

Love the idea, discussed doing something similar with a friend around the late 2000s but never did.

Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it.

by tummler

2/13/2026 at 10:19:17 AM

> Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it.

No, I don't think that's true. First I'm not sure I even agree that all "average citizens" should need to engage, it has to engage the ones that cares, not absolutely everyone. And I don't think success should be measured in "engagement" here, but I'm also not a laissez-faire capitalist, so maybe that's where the difference comes in.

There are similar platforms in relatively wide usage already, https://decidim.org/ being one of them, and as far as I know has zero gamification, because again, "engagement" as in "users spend time on the website" isn't and shouldn't be the goal here.

by embedding-shape

2/12/2026 at 8:24:40 PM

> Building on a foundation of simple but solid statistical algorithms from a decade ago

I wonder what algorithms they are talking about? Can't find any papers referenced :(

Looking at the clustering code it looks like they are using kd-trees with knn. Old skool!

by cpill

2/13/2026 at 7:24:34 AM

Basically a glorified online survey tool.

by chapz

2/13/2026 at 11:55:16 AM

This is the best way to look on this. Furthermore these surveys are susceptible to bias introduced by the varying degrees of participant engagement. One application I could see for such tools is distill some of participant generated proposals that could be rectified in a further surveys or referenda.

by JanisErdmanis

2/13/2026 at 6:11:28 AM

Popularity contests rarely lead to efficient or ethical outcomes. Just as Socrates.

by burnt-resistor

2/12/2026 at 11:14:56 PM

Assuming this platform ever get popular, it will succumb to the same problems that we see everyday on social media, botting, shilling, manipulation, fear tactics, celebrity following, you name it, and I am not sure we can get rid of these on a technical level, rather, on culture and education levels.

Also, the graph feature, it seems a bit suspicious, it feels like it will be used to see where the majority of opinions about something then used by candidates to manipulate the public about the XYZ popular opinion, which is affirming our current politics right now, instead of actual leadership that changes the public opinion. It’s similar to those YouTubers who usually start with decent contents only later to change it to title clickbait cringy ones because they are following the audience.

by tamimio

2/13/2026 at 6:00:59 PM

It will be overrun by those who have no job, family or responsibilities... it would be a free for all mess.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 9:01:35 PM

> real-time LLM-generated summaries

Please no, LLMs have been shown to introduce biases from training data into the generated "summaries". LLMs should go nowhere public policy.

by martin-t

2/13/2026 at 4:27:37 PM

While I'd hesitate to call the people behind the project out for fraud, they certainly are great at obtaining funding while delivering negative value and then presenting these experiences in a positive light. The linked site promotes their use in Germany's "aufstehen party" which wasn't actually a party but whatever if it sounds better and as I was intimately involved with that experience (being brought in to consult on recovery) it was a disaster that ended that NGO before it really begun. The Pol.is platform was supposed to be the central decision making interface of that distributed movement supported by figures from different leftwing, social democrat and ecological parties, it wasn't just that they failed to scale but they were completely unwilling to deploy on our infra or even open source critical components while maintaining publicly that their system was completely open source. The question of whether to replace it (remember its use was the key innovation of this movement) and if so with what ended up not only splitting the NGO but making one sub-group create a new party that is "neither left nor right wing" and voting with the right-wing AfD in (state) parliaments helping them secure anti-migration majorities.

by bijant

2/12/2026 at 8:05:24 PM

Damn you governor polish! /s

Jokes aside, this looks interesting. I have my doubts about the grandiosity of the claims re: helping entire "cities, states, or even countries find common ground on complex issues," but I'm somewhat captivated by the idea of using it for local issues in cities or small towns like mine.

by nozzlegear

2/12/2026 at 8:58:47 PM

Cool. Deploying ClawBot(s)... 3.. ?... 1

by Bloating

2/13/2026 at 2:05:27 PM

Soul weight diet plan where P(∆) determines the Kama strength in loss between parameters at distance ∆. Thus ∆=2log|t_2-t_1|+0(1) means system is correlated in hyperbolic metric.

by aroheir

2/12/2026 at 8:23:05 PM

I don't understand the utility of this. Maybe it works for things like noise ordinances, but I can't imagine finding common ground with people who want me dead or imprisoned simply for existing.

by sapphicsnail

2/12/2026 at 10:24:03 PM

Those people came to those views somehow. I'd hope that a less radicalizing social media platform might move them away from those views. Finding common ground isn't just about figuring out where people currently agree, it's also an act of persuasion convincing people to change views to then-mutually shared views.

Wanting people dead or imprisoned simply for existing is the sort of inconsistent view that is likely easiest to change by moving people out of radicalized spaces...

by gpm

2/13/2026 at 2:07:00 AM

> Wanting people dead or imprisoned simply for existing is the sort of inconsistent view that is likely easiest to change by moving people out of radicalized spaces...

I just don't see how polis would do this. As far as I can tell this is largely about asking a questionnaire and then a polity can view the different responses and try to find legislation that's acceptable to the largest group of people.

There are some people you can reason with but if someone has priors they aren't willing to examine there's not much you can do. I don't think we could workshop our way to civil rights.

by sapphicsnail

2/12/2026 at 10:36:51 PM

And while trying to find common ground may be hard, and it may even be a long shot, it's worth it considering the eventual alternatives.

by lokar

2/12/2026 at 10:36:48 PM

Radicalized spaces are offline too. You can't cure anyone of being irrational while they still live in a cult.

by lazyasciiart

2/12/2026 at 10:52:29 PM

So just throw away this solution then? Never use it because it can’t solve this one tiny issue you’re putting forward as an argument?

What’s your point? Everything you’re saying on this thread seems negative and puts the product (Polis) into a negative light as if somehow it’s trying to do more harm than good, or can never work because <insert extremely small issue here compared to the task of country-wide governance of millions of people>.

by movedx

2/13/2026 at 8:07:38 AM

Well, Polis is lazy, to start

by hackable_sand

2/12/2026 at 10:54:42 PM

People leave cults all the time - sometimes directly because of the online information environment where they find space to think thoughts against the cult's party line...

by gpm

2/12/2026 at 8:31:08 PM

Every Body Corporate Strata in Australia basically goes through something like this at least once a year (by law.) Questions are posed about what to vote on and you either vote for, against, or abstain.

Something like Polis would be good for putting forward ideas throughout the year leading up to the vote, as it would find a consensus of ideas and help shape what you eventually vote on (you decide as a body corporate.)

Some Strata are hundreds of people in size.

by movedx

2/12/2026 at 10:07:26 PM

Hundreds of people is a village. I don't feel this is responsive to GP's point.

by anigbrowl

2/12/2026 at 10:35:45 PM

Are you referencing a body corporate vote on trans rights or something?

by lazyasciiart