This coming week, the New Public Festival will kick off with a phenomenal group of participants examining better—less commercialized—public spaces on the internet. “We believe that the reckless design of our current, privately-owned digital spaces is tearing at our social … Continue reading →

Facebook has become an active threat, its massive profits and user growth driven by the inexorable forces of centralization. With U.S. regulators gutted by decades of bipartisan consensus, Facebook grew unchecked monopoly power through its ad targeting. The company has … Continue reading →

The open-source, open-data, non-profit AskThem Q&A platform is undergoing a volunteer redesign (!) for public accountability ahead of the 2020 elections. The website is offline as we seek to develop it fully again. Same with PPF’s deprecated website OpenGovernment.org, whose … Continue reading →

With immigration in the news, here’s a sample question-asking widget for members of Congress about the Trump Administration’s policy on legal immigration:                 Media partners and political bloggers, contact us for custom versions, … Continue reading →

Based on President Trump’s incoherent and saturated-with-willfully-incorrect-statements Dec. 28th NYT impromptu interview, a public question from political writer Mobute: Representatives whose thoughts are as impossible to engage as quicksand shouldn’t be able to escape scrutiny via incompetence and mendacity just because … Continue reading →

We’re excited to announce that the NYC Council has officially adopted Councilmatic. More info about yesterday’s announcement, made by Speaker Mark-Viverito, with special recognitions of supportive NYC Council members Kallos, Vacca and Lander. … we’ve decided to retire the previous NYC … Continue reading →

Building off the exciting announcement last week of a new API for NYC Council legislative info, here’s a look back at what the non-profit field has done over the past eleven years, and what we can still do. (Another version.) … Continue reading →

This morning, Vox’s Matt Yglesias writes of President Trump and special counsel Robert Mueller: “The fate of the [Russia] investigation — and of the integrity of the American political process — will thus rest on the often frail shoulders of the … Continue reading →