Elyze — The Political Tinder Vying for Your Vote
Elyze, the political tinder, has ignited a debate about data privacy ahead of the French presidential election
What is Elyze?
I recently heard about the Elyze app that was launched by two French students in January 2022. From the beginning, their goal was very clear: motivate the younger generation (18–29 years old) to go to the polls in April.
For those who have not heard of it yet, this app is built like the famous dating app Tinder: presidential campaign proposals are randomly displayed on the home screen and you either swipe to the right if you agree with the proposition, to the left if you disagree or in the middle if you have no opinion on the matter.
Based on your swipes, the application “matches” you with a presidential candidate who reflects the most your opinions.
This app was a huge success as it generated more than 1 million downloads in less than two weeks, something that the founders did not expect at all.
But what about the data?
However, I heard about it in the “wrong” circumstances in the sense that this app opened a very sensitive subject: data collection.
In fact, the app originally collected three pieces of data: postal code, age and gender. After a webmaster discovered security flaws in the code, the co-founder of the app — Grégoire Cazcarra — announced that all the data would be deleted. He also announced that the app code would be made open source so that everyone could read it online. In the original business model, they wanted to collect those three pieces of data in order to sell them to polling agencies and keep the app free.
By deleting the user’s data, the founders will not be able to raise revenue from it anymore. They are back to their first goal: raise awareness on the presidential elections among young people.
The Neutrality Question
Data collection was not the only controversy the founders of the app had to face. Many users, as well as politicians, complained about the lack of neutrality of the app: even if two candidates were ex aequo, one was always favoured on the final podium.
Elyze Tested
This being said, I did download the app to give it a go and see what it was really like.
I was somehow reluctant to do it at first because I feared giving my data to the app owners and potential political parties. Yes, the Cambridge Analytica scandal that was unveiled to the public in 2016 is still fresh in my mind and I did not intend to take part in a 2.0 data breach scandal.
To my surprise, the experience was very good.
Firstly, I am not really into politics — I am, of course. not alone. 21,3% of 18–24 years old and 25,1% of 25–29 years old did vote in the presidential elections in 2017 — but playing on the app really opened my mind and made the presidential elections much more interesting.
Secondly, I enjoyed the gamification of such a serious subject. It is less boring than reading a candidate program and more playful. And because it is more playful, it is more impactful.
One feature that I particularly enjoyed is that you can learn more about each campaign proposal. For instance, if you are not familiar with economical subject, you can click on “En savoir plus” — which means “I want to know more about it” — to make up your mind about the proposal. I also enjoyed the fact that you can delete your response history if you want to start the exercise all over again.
I highly recommend it to you if:
- You have no idea what candidates offer in their programs
- You do not know who you will vote for in April 2022
- You would like to be more invested in politics but do not know where to start.
Please let me know what you thought about it in the comments.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminate the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
