Etha is a real-time representation of news and peoples opinions on specific subjects and policies. Users on the platform can vote and debate and see a bigger picture of data analytics and how the world shares their views.
Hey, I'm Austin and I'm a Software Engineer at Etha. I joined this project due to an increased need for non-biased and factual political discussion. The last few years have exacerbated the media's willingness to lie for the sake of profit and most social media platforms are currently filled with political discourse that does nothing but polarize and distract us from real problems. I believe that a platform like Etha can remedy some of these issues and lessen the amount of unproductive political junk on your feed so you can get back to using social media for its intended purpose, connecting with people and watching funny cat videos. 😁
❓Etha FAQ: Is this a freedom of speech app? 🗣️
✅Answer: Yes. We have found extremely creative ways for all walks of life to feel comfortable on the platform, without the hassle of getting banned. That’s right! Without being banned. We also have a creative solution that we are working on for the future that will allow people to get rewarded for more constructive conversations, including points and exclusive details, so stay tuned. Our freedom of speech part will come in at a little later stage, but you can use our social media to say what you feel without any repercussions for now. Just like Facebook used to be years ago! Unlike Parler, GETTR, Truth social (you name it), it won’t be heavily moderated, and we will also have a way of eliminating echo chambers, as if you were mocking a real life situation being able to talk to someone as if you met them on the street. Random and fun, no nonsense….We are trying to solve a real world problem. Polarization and fake news, no more! Other platforms and giants, are only making things worse. We all know what that can mean for our future of a democracy-type lifestyle, if we don’t act on it now!
@rmarini I felt like this would be super relevant to tag you. What do you think about Etha? Happy to share other thoughts with you!
Right. Feedback?
I'm going to break down the view from one user's experience.
1) It's been 24 hours since the Etha ProductHunt launch and the same Matt Gaetz story - quoting a 10-day-old story - is still at the top of the feed. I believe @ethaofficial assured us that they 'currently uploading statements only twice a day'. With news being released every second, that's hardly an aggressive target, but not seemingly met.
2) I clicked on 'Disagree' on that Gaetz post and it changed the approval rating from 50% to 40%. That's the voting pool size?
3) Regardless of the pool size, I can't see how a popularity vote solves the misinformation problem. It's not like QAnon can't vote. Is there anywhere where we see the results of these 'LeaderQ scores' and 'advanced AI technologies' working?
4) Your landing page mentions 'participate in free, open, and global conversations with healthy discourse'. Where are these conversations?
5) These UI units used on your landing page (link below) don't seem to be your actual AI tech acting on real-world data, but rather Figma/Sketch mockups of what you'd like to see. I say that because the same quote is used for three different non-existent people. Isn't that advanced lorem ipsum rather than a product?
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6) How does this ranking system (link below) work? Green seems to be '100% trustworthy' and a full-screen bar graph. Yellow is only 65% trustworthy but a 95% bar graph. Red is '100% UNtrustworthy' but 85% screen-width. Or are you saying Green is '100% Misinformation' as the label says? Very confusing and eyebrow-raising for data-nerds. ![]()
7) The sidebar quote says 'With an innovative fact-checking process for an extra layer of accountability', yet Shanza (@shanza_khan15) insists 'Etha is not a fact-checking system'. Mixed messaging.
I could go on, but that would get tiresome.
Surely with this app, you are saying 'Identifying trustworthy information is HARD! - Trust US to help you with that problem'. Nicole says she wants to restore people's faith.
But then you present untrustworthy mockups of made-up data points as part of your pitch for trustworthiness, and no real evidence of progress on the stated problem.
I'm not sure if you just weren't ready to launch, but color me skeptical.
@ethaofficial@alexmwalker Thanks for the feedback. This is super helpful. This is just our MVP, our official launch will be sometime in Oct. We just wanted to get the official feedback and validate this idea before we concentrate on a lager launch :) the next one would take all of the feedback into account from here and users
@alexmwalker We really appreciate the feedback and will continuously work towards it. The issue with the data update happened because of a broken pipeline, whihc caused duplication of data in the server. We have resolved that issue as of today. We are updating statements twice a day on our platform but the news statements are continuously fetched and processed by the system. The system is responsible for fetching the news articles and getting the politician's statements automatically from the articles. We are curretly working on improving our data collection system, that would allow us to mark the different narratives and biasness depicted in different news articles. This would help us inform the users better as well as help us gain insights into what the users feel about the topics and the politician's in question.
The whole advanced Ai technology that can pin point misinformation is still under progress and would take about 3 years to be perfected with a 95% accuracy. This is because, we need to develop other systems that help us understand the various topics in the news, eg. covid vaccines and how different narratives or same narratives from different politicians affect the audience responses. We will also be taking sentiment data from other social networks and interent as well. This would help us establish a balance between the latest news being produced and people's reactions to it. If any element in this balanced environment causes disturbances in an unfavourable manner, we can pinpoint it as a source of misinformation.
In addition to this, I highly apologize for the mixed messaging you might have experienced because of our website. We are working on the copywriting to adhere to our current cause that will grow out into the larger cause. The whole website will be revamped and the process has already started.
We assure you that the your experience with Etha will improve from here on out.
Ok. Seems like you've launched heavier on the 'M' and not so much on the 'V' and 'P'.
I still can't envisage how you wedge yourself in between a person happily ensconced in their 'bias silo' and the content they are happily consuming. Everyone *else* needs this product because everyone else is bias - except us, right? But that's your problem to solve.
I'll keep an eye out for the next updates.
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@alexmwalkerIt I have to say the information you've provided has been a bit confusing for me as well, just from a practical standpoint. It is just unclear to me how a platform will manage both misinformation and ensure the right to speak without limitations at the same time when the discussion is related to values.
But anyway, I think something definitely should be done to improve the current media scene. I wish you good luck at @ethaofficial, there is definitely a lot to do in the field!
Nevertheless, it might be wise to consider how people here in Europe feel if you state that the news and politicians are all spreading the same news and ignoring something very important about Ukraine. The Senate in the US just approved a bill unanimously to give Ukraine more help, calling the "conflict" as bloofy invasion and war. So I was not sure what you mean by saying that we should see the other side of the coin, or hear from the grassroots what's going on in Ukraine.
Of course, I don't know how the people in the US in general feel and what kind of misinfo about the topic you have had to deal with, this was just my opinion from the neighbour of Russia.
I'm Matheo, and I am the CRO at Etha. I joined the team because when I first heard about this idea and what the vision was for this company, I knew it was going to change the world. Nicole and Aastik explained to me that their intention was to build a product and company that would help fix an enormous problem that has affected so many families, friendships, and careers - misinformation aka fake news! That is a shared problem we all have experienced at one point or another and the team at Etha is actively fighting for the solution every single day. This needs to exist and I am beyond grateful to be a part of it. We're extremely excited to share the current product with the world and can't wait to share the additional capabilities we have coming soon.
❓FAQ about Etha: Fun facts about the team and founders ? 🎢 📍
✅Answer: We wrote an article about our diverse team! Check us out on Medium, substack or Mirror! We write two articles each week. Linktree: https://linktr.ee/ethaone
Fun facts article: https://ethaone.medium.com/etha-...@alexisohanian Etha is right in the mix and thick of it all. Secret sauce? Timing. Let me know what you think about this. Thought it would be neat to showcase Etha and gather any feedback you might have! Happy to answer your questions.
@bhorowitz I saw Marc's post about how Elon's stake in Twitter could be bad news for Free Speech. What are your thoughts? Let's see how Etha can help solve that problem with our transformative tech and diverse team's creative solutions. We're up for the tough challenges! Oh and almost forgot, we're currently working on web3 and blockchain solutions!! On and up
A very unique idea indeed. Provided how much news we are consuming from social media these days, a platform like this could be extremely important. Best of luck to the team!
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