“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” — John Stuart Mill
May 12th, 2016 is the day The Tylt launched as an MVP by Alpha Group and a few Tylt team members. The idea was; let’s try and fix the broken system of how the internet argues and build a platform that places value in the opinions of its audience.
Since May a lot has changed on our platform and across the media landscape but a lot remains the same. Peoples’ desire to express themselves has not changed nor has the feeling that it is difficult to have your opinion matter on the internet. Social algorithms have created polarizing echo chambers that leave little room for meaningful conversation. Even if those conversations take place, it’s near-impossible to get a macro understanding as to how your opinion figures into the broader context. It’s often the case that each side of the conversation (or argument) simply stereotypes and dismisses the other without having to actually consider the other stance.
People are understandably frustrated at the current level of discourse on the internet.
Media organizations are frustrated at the level of discourse as well. On December 20th, Vice announced they would be getting rid of their comments section, stating,
“ At their best, comments can foster a productive community discussion around a particular story or topic, often providing insight or commentary that might have been missed otherwise.”
However, Vice also stated in the piece,
“Unfortunately, website comments sections are rarely at their best. Without moderators or fancy algorithms, they are prone to anarchy. Too often they devolve into racist, misogynistic maelstroms where the loudest, most offensive, and stupidest opinions get pushed to the top and the more reasoned responses drowned out in the noise.”
Audience opinions are difficult to parse but it doesn’t mean media organizations should stop listening. Peoples’ opinions and the network effect of those opinions are an incredibly valuable resource. Just because most media organizations find the voices of their audience unwieldy doesn’t mean they should stop listening.
The recent election showed us what happens when we don’t care to listen to what people are saying.
Problems like this are what we’re working to solve. We are using our understanding of the media landscape combined with our technology and data to take the pulse of the internet and create a space where people’s opinions literally count.
We use our technology to listen to what people are saying across social platforms, our own site and across the web in order to showcase both sides of a debate and visualize, in real time, which side is more popular. We’re elevating the opinions of our community by allowing them to write themselves into a story simply by sharing an opinion.
We certainly don’t know everything which is why we’re continually working on ways to add signals to better understand individual opinions and contributions. For example, if you head over to The Tylt today, you will see that we’re framing the topics that are being heavily discussed across the web and allowing people to participate by expressing their opinion in the form of a vote for the side they believe in. We’re also collecting voting signals from both Facebook and Twitter based off of many day-to-day interactions that people take on those platforms. In addition to our own site, Facebook and Twitter, we’re working on building out a few select partnerships with media organizations that are interested in better understanding the opinions of their audience and who among them carries the greatest degree of social influence on certain subject matter. All of these signals allow us to paint a picture of how our community feels in real time and how their participation impacts a story they care about.
We’ve come a long way since May, creating an incredibly talented and diverse team while building out our foundation so that we can scale and better measure the meaningful contributions of our community and the broader internet. We’ve got a long way to go, but the response to date has been tremendously motivating. It’s also been incredibly rewarding to see how much people value having their opinions matter in a broader context.
We sincerely appreciate everyone in The Tylt community that has participated, given us feedback and shown interest thus far. We also appreciate those of you who have not yet actively participated on our site, but continue to share your viewpoints across social media and the the web at large. It is your daily contributions that continually motivate us to continue building The Tylt. We promise to keep on listening to what you have to say.
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