Innovations

This is civic tech: The OpenGov Foundation has released Madison 3.0, which enables public engagement on draft legislation. The updated version is free and open source.

Here’s a comprehensive review of the Obama administration’s record on a wide range of government transparency issues, written by the Sunlight Foundation’s Alex Howard.

Tech and politics: Matt Holland and Michael Silberman have a smart piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, arguing that digital campaigning has become too regularized. They write, “The real magic of innovative, cutting-edge campaigns is not any specific tactic; it’s the spirit and ability to continually evolve. The most successful campaigns usually involve not just technology but also creativity,” adding, “the widespread availability of digital campaign tools can actively hinder innovation.”

VoteCastr, a start-up made up of data scientists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and journalists (including Victory Lab author Sasha Issenberg), is planning to publish detailed projections for swing-state outcomes while voting is playing out on Election Day, Nick Corasaniti reports for the New York Times. It will not be using exit polls, but instead will be using turnout models based on key counties along with on-the-ground observations of actual precinct-level turnout as the day unfolds.

The candidates for secretary of state of Washington are sparring over a glitch in the state’s online search tool, MyVote, that made personal voter information accessible, Jim Camden reports for the Spokesman-Review. The problem was pointed out by the Democratic candidate, Tina Podlodowski, and corrected—with an apology—by the incumbent, Republican Kim Wyman. Some voter data, including phone numbers and email addresses, was exposed in the system’s source code.

Life in Facebookistan: Responding to the furor over Facebook’s deletion of Nick Ut’s photographic of a naked Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack, Facebook PR said “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.” In response, engineer Dan Hon went on a beautiful rant, pointing out that software engineers in Silicon Valley pride themselves on tackling and solving hard technical problems. He writes, addressing Facebook:

Building and maintaining a n-to-n communications platform for over a billion *daily* active users across multiple access platforms *is* difficult and *is* hard and you’ve done it and congratulations, that was lots of work and effort. You – and your Valley compatriots – talk excitedly and breathlessly about solving Hard Problems and Disrupting Things, but in other areas – other areas that are *also* legitimate hard problems like content moderation and community moderation and abuse (which isn’t even a new thing!) – do not appear to interest you. They appear to interest you to such a little degree that it looks like you’ve given up *compared to* the effort that’s put into other hard problems. You can’t have it both ways.”

Reversing itself, Facebook restored the Ut photo, as Mark Scott and Mike Isaac report for the New York Times, but only after deleting it not only from journalists’ pages but also from that of Norway’s prime minister, who had posted it in solidarity.

Open culture: Slate is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a series of introspective pieces on a whole range of topics, including this essay by Laura Miller on how the Harry Potter fandom was the first true internet-born fandom, looking at how it has changed the way creators and consumers interact with each other.

What sharing economy? Uber is about to roll out self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, and as Cecilia Kang reports for the New York Times, the city’s Mayor Bill Peduto, who prides himself on his love of tech, has been remarkably hands-off and welcoming about the experiment.