Daily Question
One question a day. Vote, reflect, then see how others responded. Builds a longitudinal picture of public opinion.
Today's question →Open source civic infrastructure
Making Disagreement Useful Again
Open-source civic infrastructure for structured public judgment — and the daily habits that feed it.
Open source
No ads · No tracking
ML-powered deliberation
140+ curated news sources
The problem
Society has information. It lacks understanding.
Most public debate online rewards speed, outrage, and tribal certainty — so people often believe they disagree more than they do. Better decisions need a clearer picture of where communities align, where they split, and which ideas can bridge the gap.
Our theory of change
How participation becomes better judgment
We are building toward a more accurate, transparent view of public opinion on the issues people engage with here — not another comment section, but a shared reasoning layer. Each product is a step in the same chain.
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Engage
Meet people where curiosity already is — brief, question, play, or journey.
Tradeoffs · Daily Question · Daily Brief · Big Questions Journey
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Participate
Vote on clear statements — often before seeing crowds, so your view is yours first.
Discussions · programmes you run · publisher embeds
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Reveal
Machine learning groups people by voting patterns, not labels — then surfaces structure in the results.
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Understand
Individuals see the full shape of opinion; institutions see evidence they can cite and export.
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Decide & act
Better-informed citizens, journalism, research, and policy — plus consultations you host on our infrastructure.
We are honest about limits: analysis needs enough participants; Tradeoffs measures responses to fiction, not your ideology; org exports are aggregate. Progress is cumulative — one question, one programme, one consultation at a time.
The engine
Three design choices behind the chain above — methodology inspired by Pol.is / the Computational Democracy Project.
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Structured statements
Single claims, Agree / Disagree / Unsure — not threaded outrage.
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Think first
Many surfaces hide aggregates until you have voted, reducing anchoring.
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Pattern-based groups
Clusters form from votes, not demographics — then feed the reveal step below.
For civic tech builders
Run your own programmes on our infrastructure
Society Speaks is not only a public square — it is civic infrastructure you can deploy. Launch structured consultations, citizen assemblies, research panels, publisher embeds, and internal strategy processes using the same deliberation engine we use on societyspeaks.io.
- Programmes — group discussions by theme and phase, manage stewards, control visibility, export CSV data
- Discussions & polls — ship your own statements, seed questions, invite cohorts, run public or private consultations
- Publisher embeds & API — embed voting on your site; automate topics from your CMS
- Consensus analysis — opinion clusters, bridge ideas, and exports when you have enough participation
What the system reveals
Three distinct types of insight — not a single vote count:
Consensus statements
Broad agreement across opinion clusters — including groups that disagree elsewhere.
Bridge ideas
Statements that resonate across clusters that otherwise split — often the most useful for policy and dialogue.
Genuine divisions
Clear fault lines where deeper deliberation is needed — surfaced honestly, not hidden.
One platform, many ways to engage
Free civic tools for everyone. Premium Briefs and partnerships fund the commons.
Daily civic habit
Daily Brief
Free digest of 3–5 civic stories from 140+ sources with left/centre/right breakdown and why each story matters.
Read today's brief →Tradeoffs
Five turns of governing under pressure — discover what kind of leader you become when every choice helps someone and hurts someone else.
Play today →Depth & discovery
Big Questions Journey
8 themes, country editions, at least 56 seed statements — vote across climate, AI, democracy, health, and more, then see your recap.
Start the journey →Discussions
Topic-based deliberation on news and community issues — create your own or join open conversations.
Explore discussions →News Transparency Dashboard
Today's news across the spectrum — sensationalism scores, coverage balance, and source transparency.
Open dashboard →Personal Briefs
Paid custom digests from your RSS feeds, Substacks, and PDFs — subscriptions fund the free civic platform.
Explore Personal Briefs →From news to deliberation
Curated civic news and spectrum transparency feed the Engage step — then seed statements and discussions carry issues into structured participation.
How we source news for debate →Built in the open
Society Speaks is open source (AGPL). Audit the code, contribute improvements, or self-host components for your own civic stack.
The code and the data are licensed separately: individual votes and responses are never sold and never licensed to anyone. Only aggregate, anonymised patterns — what society agrees on, where it divides, how judgement shifts over time — may be licensed to institutions, and that revenue keeps the platform free and ad-free.
View on GitHubSupport the mission
No advertising, no selling your data. Civic features stay free thanks to donations, Personal Brief subscriptions, and publisher partner plans.
Make a donationReady to participate or build?
Take the Journey, answer today's question, or launch your own consultation on our infrastructure.