Transparency and explainability
/Transparency and explainability
Polis's open statement prioritization formula explains which statements will be prioritized on the platform https://x.com/compdem/status/1614178107422015494/photo/1. Image taken from the Computational Democracy Project
For a good example of what explainability looks like on a digital participation platform, consider Polis's open source statement prioritization formula. Its founder, Colin Megill, says, "We have a lot of responsibility here. We will know exactly what gets recommended because we own the attention mechanism all the way to the last line of code, and have no profit motive in the loop." Compared to a black box recommendation engine, Polis knows which content gets recommended to other users, and why.