This worthwhile Guardian article ‘How Taiwan’s ‘civic hackers’ helped find a new way to run the country‘ describes the important gOv experiment carried out there. Using a platform focused on areas of agreement rather than tending to split communities around disagreement it seems that they have built a platform that gives hope that internet can be used to really foster democracy (g0v.asia).
Of course this experiment could only come from Taiwan where the need for democracy is particularly essential due to the ambitions of its mainland neighbor.
The Guardian article explains how this started in 2014, and how important it is now in the local political landscape, with even a minister stemming from this movement.
Interestingly, a cornerstone of the approach is radical transparency about everything in the public sphere – making information and data much more accessible to the citizens.
But the most interesting I find is that “the discussants found themselves in an entirely new kind of online space – exactly the opposite of a social media platform that encourages strife“. “As people expressed their views, rather than serving up the comments that were the most divisive, it gave the most visibility to those finding consensus – consensus across not just their own little huddle of ideological fellow-travellers, but the other huddles, too. Divisive statements, trolling, provocation – you simply couldn’t see these.“
So it quite possible to use Internet in a way that fosters agreement instead of the traditional social networks we have grown used to, that do rather the contrary. This is quite an important message, and I am looking forward to this type of platforms to become increasingly widespread.
