Project: Common Ground

A new digital platform in the making – “Common Ground”

The internet and social media offer great possibility, but also harbor danger. Nowadays, much of our social interaction happens online. Here, we spend our free time, watch videos, listen to music, or interact with friends. But we also check out the latest news from around the globe and discuss relevant topics. Unfortunately, such discussions often run off the rails and we end up verbally attacking one another instead of having fruitful discussions. Our project “Common Ground” seeks to utilize the endless possibilities of the internet to create a social media forum for genuine online discussions. This way, we might create the preconditions for deliberative democracy.

How? Scroll through this page and find out!
Here, we share our latest ideas and approaches on how to realize such a platform.

Want to contribute?
Do you agree on the importance of honest discussions about relevant topics? What do you consider as obstacles for such a platform and how might the project be improved? Let us know by writing a mail or meet us directly on our discord server!

A prototype for consensual communication

The goal
The goal of the project “Common Ground” is the creation of a new digital platform that allows people with different perspectives on life, in all its relevant spheres, to engage in critical exchange. We want to create a space of free discourse, detached from any constraints – besides the ones we agree upon ourselves. Reaching overall consensus is an ideal that oftentimes might not be facilitated, but aiming for such might perhaps lead to an acceptable compromise. Nowadays, we are facing many pressing issues. Sealing off and staying inside one’s own bubble won’t get us anywhere.

Features
With the ambition to be used by many people, the platform has to contain several specific features that are appealing to a broad audience: Modern social media platforms, like Facebook or Instagram, already offer vast possibilities of connecting with other people and following personal interests. However, they lack the means to foster critical exchange and the structure for comprehensible argumentation. Discussion-based forums, such as reddit, focus on argumentative exchange, but are not as established and offer few opportunities for direct social networking.
Common Ground wants to combine these aspects to create an authentic platform with the potential to form a large user base.

Here are some of the platform’s essential features:

Rules and user guidelines
Free speech has immense value, but does it have limitations? On the one hand, people should be free to voice their true opinion. The topics that are the most pressing usually are the most controversial as well. Therefore, free speech is necessary for reaching a conclusion. On the other hand, certain rules are needed to prevent abuse. Despite the intentional abuse of communication, also a certain quality of discussion needs to be ensured. This includes, for example, the willingness to come to a productive conclusion and to actually refer to the arguments put forward by the partner in discussion.
Coming up with the right set of rules is a challenge: The platform needs a distinct set of rules, ideally elaborated by all its members, which balances the tension between freedom of speech and its necessary regulation.

A democratic mode of content moderation
Content moderation deals with the monitoring of user-generated content. Usually, platforms use algorithms to detect abuse and malcontent. They are useful methods to regulate, but they also run danger of censoring content and might be insensitive for context specificity, which threatens freedom of speech.
In complicated cases, we want the users of the platform to decide, on a democratic basis, whether rules have been violated or not. “The Tribunal” is a unique feature of the platform that puts up cases, once flagged for violation, to be decided upon. Thereby, we want to make the rules and guidelines tangible and promote participation as part of a responsible membership.

Work in progress
All of this is a first approach to a future platform that has not been launched yet. As we are continually working on the project, we will sketch out further concepts and ideas on this page to share our progress. We are actively searching for enthusiastic people who engage in the development of this project. Regardless of your field of expertise, your contribution is of value. The project grows through its participants.