Polis (or Pol.is) is a software designed to get large groups of people to collaborate.[1] By allowing people to share their opinions and ideas, its algorithm is intended to elevate ideas that can facilitate consensus decision-making.[2]
By September 2020, this civic technology was promoted as having formed the core of a dozen pieces of legislation passed in Taiwan.[2] Proponents had sought out a way to inform the government with the opinions of citizens between elections while also providing an online outlet for citizens that was less divisive and more informative than social media and other large websites.[2][3] Polis has also been used in America, Canada, and Singapore.[4]
Colin Megill is one of the cofounders of Pol.is along with Christopher Small and Michael Bjorkegren who built it after Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring.[4]
vTaiwan has used pol.is as "one of the key parts" of its suite of open-source tools in its citizen engagement efforts.[5] It starts with crowdsourcing objective facts from those involved before users submit statements as to how to solve those problems which participants can agree or disagree with.[6] Then, once a rough consensus is reached, the users can hash out the details over video conferencing.[6] vTaiwan has also built on top of it by taking away features like the ability to reply to other people's comments as a way to minimize trolling.[5] While the results of polls have been non-binding, as of 2019, vTaiwan claims that of the 26 national issues related to technology were discussed on the platform and 80% led to government action.[4][5]
Join
Another platform that has used Pol.is, "Join," is the national platform for online deliberation in Taiwan run by the government. It focuses on all issues, whereas vTaiwan is run by citizens and focuses on digital issues.[7][8] "Join" was, by 2018, able to attract 5 million citizens to join, more than vTaiwan had up until that point.[5] The software allows for a reframing of the questions posed in an attempt to focus on root causes if that was where a consensus could be found.[5]Audrey Tang clarified that unanimity is not the goal with this tool, but "rough consensus" where a tolerable compromise is found.[9] Megill credits Tang and CL Kao, a cofounder of g0v, with convincing him to open-source pol.is.[9]
Reception
Andrew Leonard describes Pol.is as being intended as an antidote to the divisiveness of traditional internet discourse.[9]
Darshana Narayanan argues that open-source machine-learning-based tools like Polis can help to bypass the influence of special interests or experts.[4]
