Welcome to another episode of the Democracy Innovator Podcast and our guest of today is Yuting Zhang from Agora Citizen Network.
So thank you for your time, Yuting.
Thank you for having me here.
uh
As a first question I would like to ask you what is Agora Citizen Network, the project you working on.
So, Agro-Citizen Network is a fully open source uh deliberative tool and it's also a dialogue space, like a reimagined digital transfer.
We are a Paris-based team and we started a project about two years ago in 2024.
uh
And what prompted us to start the project was when we witnessed that uh elections were happening around the world, dialogue space was shrinking on the internet.
We witnessed a lot of growing polarization, and although it was supposed to be a digital town square, so we wanted to reimagine how it could be and how we could embed pro-social
designs.
algorithms in this new space that we are co-creating with the users.
and I mean I know that this software is a sort of fork of police, right?
How did you know?
If you want to add...
Yeah, so we were very inspired by Paulus and we were looking basically we were looking for different ways to interact with each other and we were very inspired by Paulus.
think I saw somewhere on the internet that the founder of Paulus said, Magill, he said Twitter was great for building a movement, but it was not great for writing a
constitution.
And uh that really
spark something in us that we need a different kind of a way to interact with each other.
A way that's more constructive and uh it's not about followers and influencers but it's more about individuals and link among individuals.
um However, uh rather than forking another policy, we actually decided to abstract the algorithm from policy.
For us, was what uh mattered the most.
It's a machine learning algorithm that is able to uh distinguish different schools of thoughts, different opinion groups, purely by looking at how people vote, agree, disagree,
or unsure on each other's opinions.
And then these algorithms are able to basically put participants into different clusters and then we are able to see which statements uh divide these groups, which statements make
them unique, representative, and which opinions they unite the room.
So which opinions they help people build common ground.
And we feel that this is extremely unique and valuable in today's world.
And it's also what we call bridging-based algorithms.
So we decided that in Agora, we are going to use this similar uh kind of algorithm.
And eventually, we worked with the open source developer to rewrite this algorithm in Python, because the original policy was built as a product.
But we wanted to make the algorithm into a library that
any team who wants to uh use this algorithm can build different products on top of it.
It doesn't have to be the same product, it doesn't have to be the same deliberative tool layout.
And in our context, we wanted to have a more button-up approach to add social features, to add...
Yeah, like a community vibe to it.
So that's why we couldn't just, we couldn't directly fork the policy.
However, we, on Agora, we have the same mechanism of agree, disagree, unsure.
And also on an, the shows people where the common ground lies, where the division lies and what's the opinion mapping in real time.
Okay, very interesting this abstraction of the algorithm.
um First you described uh why you think it is important uh to have a software like this uh and also very cool the fact about the...
I wonder if you were talking about a sort of mini-app that maybe user can build, uh like a sort of plugins.
And yeah, I have a question.
When you first had the idea about technology and politics, that could be a nice match.
It's an interesting question because originally before we started Agoram, we actually were in the decentralized identity space and we actually built an MVP that is based on
zero-knowledge proof.
um What is really interesting about Zero Knowledge Proof is that it allows anyone to prove um certain aspects of your identity without revealing your personal data.
For example, you can prove your age anonymously or your nationality anonymously.
You can prove that you're a human, not a bot, anonymously or that you belong to a certain community.
The reason why we built the lift, it had a lot of potential, also when we witnessed uh that the internet was becoming completely fogged with bots.
And according to the statistics from TELUS group, think in 2024, one third of internet traffic was generated by bots.
And there are also coordinated astroturfing campaigns happening on...
all major social networks including Twitter, Facebook and so on.
So we decided to do a small test and we built uh MVP of a forum that uses zero-knowledge proof to allow
students and teachers, so people from the school, from the university, to prove that they are members of this community while posting anonymously.
That's uh how we started, because we wanted to have both uh anonymity, which we believe that is very important for freedom of expression, but at the same time we want
verifiability.
We want to know that these posts uh
They come from genuine um members that um people from the same university, for example, that they really feel that they are chatting with others from their university and
meanwhile having the ability to express themselves more freely.
um
When we built this prototype, was also oh in the time of increasing tension on university campuses, uh especially around censorship.
uh There's a nonprofit in the US called the Fire Foundation.
They published a ranking of freedom of expression, a score per university.
And so in that year, there was a lot of censorship going on in almost all the campuses.
ah Yeah, so it was a fun experiment when we decided to do it.
However, what we witnessed was that although we allow people to speak freely, the classic form is not, design is not enough, the usual algorithm is not enough.
because when people are anonymous and sometimes they start to troll each other and uh then that's when we started to look at different kinds of solutions to help people have
dialogues in a meaningful way and that's when we discovered Paulus and uh decided to, oh, let's try building using this algorithm that perhaps we can term disagreements.
um even controversy into something that is useful, is uh constructive for the community.
Do you have an example of let's say disagreement or other or something that was discussed in that could be also on some other platform but also on Agora Citizen, something that was
particularly meaningful for you.
um So about 10 days ago, Agra was used at a Web3 community in Chiang Mai in Thailand called Four Seas.
So it's a permanent Zuzaaloo node and we were there physically as well at a session where it was used.
uh
The topic of the session was about how can...
public interest spaces and communities be sustainably founded and what kind of uh commercialization could they explore and so on.
It was very interesting because Four Seas itself is definitely a public interest community.
However, and so they invited speakers who are building communities basically that are all like um
they're like intellectual hubs or artists or sometimes they're just for students.
And so we were discussing how they can be sustainably founded.
uh in the discussion there was this agreement on
whether if these kind of communities could only be founded by donations or if commercialization is viable, what kind of commercialization is viable.
And there was disagreement.
There were, we mapped about five different groups during that session and there were purists.
The so purists, there were people who believed that, if these communities is for public interest,
then they should not seek monetization because it would pollute the intention of these spaces.
And there were also pragmatists who believed, for example, um public good uh builders, community builders, they should regard themselves as entrepreneurs.
And there was also controversy around if a space is for public interest, if they should um sacrifice the depth of the discussions, the depth of the events, the intellectual depth um
of the events for more engaging topics and formats.
So that m was a very intriguing conversation.
There were four or five speakers who were all community builders and about 50 to 60 participants who were visiting this space.
And some of them are also residents of this community.
um So it was interesting to see how they vote in real time and then also to see to have the speakers to comment directly, give their opinions on the results of the conversation.
Sometimes I imagine like if in the future or next future if people could use this kind of tool to participate in the political life.
How do you imagine it like the future?
If you thought about it.
uh We chose the name Agora because in ancient Greek it was the place where citizens discussed politics and philosophies and uh matters related to their city.
So our vision for Aurora is to become this dialogue space for citizens to discuss matters that would help them to shape the policies collectively.
And we also named it Citizen Network because we think today many social networks, they are the digital taxpayers, but a lot of them, they were not intentionally built for this
purpose.
They were built for entertainment, keeping in touch with friends or sharing fun cat videos.
so the design and algorithm that increases engagement, sometimes it's
counterproductive to issues that are complex and sometimes divisive.
So that's why we decided to call it Agro-Citizen Network.
And what we wish is that more people would um discover alternative ways of governance that is not just about voting and it's also about dialogue because well voting can take
different shapes and forms but currently the most the most usual while voting is is
is outdated and it creates a lot of conflicts among citizens.
So we would hope um that by building up GRUB we would raise awareness of these alternative ways to help people have more dialogues, to maximize consensus, to maximize their common
ground before they move on to voting.
and um to make um democracy processes more participatory uh in constructive way.
um Yeah, so that's our vision.
Okay, now yeah, I also hope that this will happen.
So because there is a lot of, I see it also on the people around me, a lot of polarization.
It's not easy to discuss about things where we have a lot of emotions and feeling.
um So everything that is helpful to do that, or also to
Yeah, to help a larger uh mass of people to decide about something.
So I really hope that in the future we will see even more like now when you were talking, I mean before you were talking about the algorithm under uh Polis and um I was thinking or
maybe in Polis too we're working on it, I don't know, like about also possible uh speech to text.
So maybe people uh meet in a sort of physical agora.
um
And then the technology, the algorithm in the background is helping in finding agreements and also point of conflicts.
uh
Yeah, I'm really excited about the future.
Yeah, thank you.
Transcribing physical conversations into text is definitely something we very interested in exploring more.
uh Also, are currently only using policy, uh but the goal is to provide...
uh
different kinds of algorithms that people can choose and compare the analysis results um to open a space for a plurality of algorithms.
think um that's the picture, the big picture that we have.
Also, in terms of transcribing real-time conversations that happen in the physical space, we are also seeking to partner with other deliberative tools like DanBrain for example.
They basically can transcribe what people say in small groups into insights that can be used to generate comments and so on.
So we are also working with them.
to experiment on these kind of projects together.
And we hope to work with more civil tech tools to bring values to each other's users.
This is quite cool, I was also trying to imagine now in this moment, uh how to...
um because people talk, but then it's not really structured data, while in a Gora network or policy...
I mean you have some more structured data.
I need to think more about it, but it's something I really enjoy.
Do you have any other functionalities in mind that you're working on or you would like to work on it?
oh We have a lot of ideas all the time, even when you just said about structured versus unstructured data, we are also looking at ways to make sense of unstructured data, just to
have um different ways to fit into the algorithm.
uh But right now our priority is
So there are three different things that we are developing.
The first is to uh enable to basically customize Aurora for specific use cases.
For example, if a community wants to use a certain type of community credentials, or if a city uh has its own database uh for the digital identity system, we want to support that.
it for them to allow their residents, for example, to participate in anonymous but verifiable discussions.
And the second...
The project that we are exploring is to build the API of Agera.
Other civic tech tools can integrate Agera into their own products.
Their users will not need to juggle between different tools.
We want to also integrate the APIs of other tools as well.
For the third part, we are now trying to co-create a deliberative standard.
So a decentralized deliberative standard, call this the DDS with other teams.
The idea is to really to allow interoperability among CeliTech tools by making verifiable data interoperable.
So these are the three main projects that we're working on this year.
Okay, is it okay decentralized liberative standard seems Quite interesting to me.
I mean because it's folks about interoperability uh And I wonder if it because also inside metagov they're working inside the interrupt about interoperability and ontologies and
those outside so there are
I see a lot of effort in doing these interoperability things and I think it's probably what we need because otherwise...
also now there is this thing about data spaces m
like a sort of uh place where we could put all the data from different deliberations, different softwares and still have them and it's also quite exciting topic.
Yeah.
So, so on the deliberative standard, we are chatting with the team from Metagolf and, uh
and the ontology that they made, I think it's very interesting and very complementary to what we want to build as well.
yeah, so ideally we will be co-creating this.
And the reason why we chose AT Protocol uh is because so far now...
uh
For now, um on Agora, the data is hosted in our server.
um And this is a...
So this is interesting for clients who want to keep their data private.
However, for the use cases where the data is of public interest and we want to make it more censorship resistant, we want to share it on the decentralized web, then AT Protocol
becomes the perfect infrastructure for this kind of conversations, for civic consultation, for example, of a country or
uh The main difference I think between this approach to the democracy data space um approach is the difference between open versus private data.
Maybe now I was using the word data space without meaning a specific one if private or public more as a concept where data can be sort of collected and connected.
Yeah, but I agree that it should be very important to see at the technical level how that data is stored.
You were saying that now uh everything is saved on the server and of ah But so what happens if someone else let's say install Because then is it open source or not?
Yeah, it should be open source so if I stole it on my server and I use it with my community or my um
then the data is exchanged through the AT protocol between the two servers.
So for now, is basically like poet, so whoever hosts it, hosts the data.
But for users who want to create a conversation that is hosted on a decentralized network, we will be able to allow that.
So if they post something on Aurora, this data will be directly broadcast on the AT protocol.
Okay.
Also this part is very interesting.
um Yeah, let's say, I mean, something about your background.
If you...
uh So I had a very um different, well diverse, background.
I actually studied filmmaking when I was a college student.
um But instead of pursuing a career in filmmaking, I switched to tech.
And so I worked in Microsoft in tech cells.
um
before I decided uh to co-found this startup with my co-founder.
The reason why I did that was uh also just witnessing how...
um
AI was changing the world in such a rapid way, but our societies or how the societies work seem to be lagging behind.
So we wanted to leverage AI to use, to build alternative kinds of interactions among us, individuals.
So yeah.
But so now in the project, how many people are working on this?
we are two co-founders working full-time right now on the project and we work with freelance developer and freelance designer.
uh
Okay cool.
so you have seen different places.
I wonder like, I mean, humans are humans everywhere and conflicts are conflicts everywhere.
um Yeah, I was wondering if you see differences between different countries where you were, where you stayed uh in terms of how people were dealing with...
Yeah, conflicts, polarisation or this kind of things.
So actually I moved around a bit before I settled down in Europe about eight years ago in France basically.
so well I never I actually never really voted.
um I couldn't really participate in voting.
And so I was an observer to how the systems work in France.
there is, uh I mean, I think the polarization in France mirrors what's happening uh elsewhere in the world.
uh
No.
So, and we also, we work in France, we work with a team of facilitators who are trying to raise awareness of civic tattoos like agro and polis to counter this polarization trend in
France.
And uh in September, we collaborated with them on...
during a national strike called the blocking too.
It basically means let's stop everything, let's block everything.
It was a response to a proposed um budget plan to cut public funding.
However, uh so it was a little bit like a follow up to the Yellow Vest movement from pre-COVID times.
um
But the movement did not really lead to more concrete outcomes, although the prime minister stepped down because of the tension in the society.
So what the facilitators wanted to find out was what united the protesters.
Although they were demanding let's block everything, although they were expressing anger, in times of tension like that, what kind of consensus could we build?
uh What was the baseline for their collective action?
And what they found, so they drafted about like 20 sit comments like that and eventually more than 200 people participated and they contributed to more than a hundred opinions.
So they were sharing what they were protesting for and what they were proposing instead.
And it was interesting to see that there was...
Basically a very strong consensus m that uh France needed to test the ultra-rich.
But the main divisive statements were around um if they need deeper...
um
reorganization of the government or not, which is more radical.
So what they did was to show how even in protests there can be different groups of opinions.
this would also allow the organizers to see um what kind of um
consensus they can build and what kind of proposals would alienate parts of the community.
Yeah I was saying it's very interesting this part because many times I thought what if people could let's say protest using uh arguments like...
uh
saying what they really want because often what happens is that maybe there are thousands of thousands of people that want to demonstrate about something that they ask about
something uh but often there is also like someone that take that fight and instrumentalize it so I wonder like what if people could really like express themselves
And also it's very interesting how um also some radical things they were asking for.
uh
basically.
I think what happens sometimes in movements or protests is that the leaders, they would um say a message, broadcast a message, then the members would follow.
uh In these words, this is powerful.
That's like how Twitter works.
But a lot of the times, when people have more nuanced demands, they do have different demands, although they might unite behind.
um the same banner even though they are behind one banner, are still um different um groups of opinions and using a tool like um Agora or Polis would allow everybody to um see
um the different demands um from their community, from their members.
This is in some way connected with the question about the future.
Do you think that in the future could be in 10, 20 years or more, like traditional politics can be maybe not exist anymore or maybe yes, but with a lot of participation from
citizens?
um Sometimes people were...
How do you imagine the future in these terms?
All people participate, not all people, but some people participate.
How do you imagine a sort digital democracy?
Well, I think this is like a super big challenge and I think digital democracy um definitely makes participation much easier for um
for people who know how to use the tools.
But accessibility, digital literacy is definitely an issue.
so I don't think digital democracy would replace, completely replace what it is today.
uh
But I do think it's very important, it's a very, very important and complementary way to understand what people think, to understand what people want.
And I think we are also in a very exciting time when more and more
Well, people but also governments around the world, start um to adopt more uh innovative civic tattoos and I think this is a great sign.
But also, uh civic society organizations are super important to show the institutions uh what's possible, what alternatives are possible.
uh
And then by showing these different alternatives and proving that they do provide values, this would increase adoption by institutions as well.
Yeah, think this is like definitely, needs the entire, we need to grow the ecosystem because it takes more than a village to make it work.
And we are also relative newcomers to the ecosystem.
uh Now it's been three years.
um
But apart from building Agroa, we are also trying to raise awareness of digital democracy in general.
through organizing community events ah or partnering with other organizations uh to just talk about uh what you can do with these tools.
And working with students, for example, to show them how AI could be used for deliberation and so on.
And I think this is all extremely, it's small depths, but these are all extremely important to build this movement.
oh
Absolutely.
em do you have...
I mean, anything you're struggling at doing, I don't know, could be a future that you're working on or could be something else.
I know also, civic tech field funding is not always uh the best.
em Yeah, so something...
or in some way you could need the help.
Maybe someone listen to the podcast and say, I will contact you thing.
um
Yeah
thank you so much.
yeah, funding is definitely a challenge from the beginning, but we were lucky to receive two grants from the European Union through the Horizon Europe's Next Generation Internet,
NGI, since 2024.
That's what allowed us to start building AgroAffo time.
and yeah, TV tech is definitely not the most profitable, the most easy field.
However, we believe that there is a way to achieve sustainability while remaining ethical.
and our product is completely open source.
But right now we provide services to customize it and to help other teams if they want to self-host Agora.
And yeah, we are also, well, we are basically pursuing more paying clients, but also more funding, either from grants or from Value Aligned Angel in this coming year.
Nice.
And uh as the last question, if you have any message for the people that are working um on similar software or like in the field.
uh
Yeah, I invite whoever that is interested in this space that is already building or that have ideas to please join us.
We need more people.
We need more.
um
resources and knowledge is one of the most valuable resource in today's world and your attention as well.
I'm grateful to whoever that's listening to this episode.
Please reach out if you'd to know more about what we do or in this field in general or if you'd like to contribute in any way.
Thank you lot, YouTing, if you'd like to add anything else.
m Otherwise, thank you.
uh
Yeah, thank you so much as well.
So thank you again.