Looking for feedback and advice. I'm an engineer, not a journalist or policy researcher, so a lot of this domain is still new to me despite working on it for a year.
* Focus on the policy stuff since that's your differentiator. Put it front and center, currently it's below the "trending news". Nobody needs another trending news feed. I'd cut it entirely.
* Make your differentiator hyper-obvious at a glance on the front page. Right now your above-the-fold is dominated by a wall of AI generated text. It should include a tagline for your site and visuals that people won't get elsewhere.
* Your UI screams "vibe coded" which does not build confidence. Look to other authoritative sites for visual cues - consider a serif for headlines, make your spacing more thoughtful and consistent, reduce or remove your border radius.
I am planning to bring out more of the impact highlights from the policies to see what's "trending" or what certain reps are working on but just plans for now.
There is no legitimate reason for a project like this to prioritize a general newsfeed, as opposed to a very specific newsfeed focused on legislation, regulation activity, and court cases. I can think of many interesting and useful ways to integrate the news into a government activity tracker. Yet another slopfeed of whatever nonsense is trending in the news, is not one of them.
It's a shame because I love the idea, but I can't say I trust the creator much at all. I guess now with AI it's easy enough for me to go whip up my own.
The idea is to have ordinary people read their news with the facts and the impacts. You don't need to engage with MSF or your food bank for them to make an impact. Bringing policy impact to news does require engagement - it requires interest. This tool isn't for policy researchers and that is exactly why it's not the exact thing you described. Every day people need to use it not people starving or in a war zone.
Rather than try to compete in the "current events" space you might have more success in more differentiated channels like having people subscribe to issues, subscribe to reps... News should be part of it but you should lead as much as possible with your differentiator. I bet you could sell enterprise level subscriptions for industry-relevant regulatory news.
It's already a problem when researching a law proposal that dozens of news outlets will just copy-paste a bland summary of arguments from both sides, neither being explored fully.
I would recommend giving direct links to actually partisan information so people can situate the bill's intent and consequences in a broader context.
Where it helps:
- sometimes a bill's proponent is just an industry puppet whose talking points will be repeated in the media, but aren't solid enough to warrant a proper article… unlike opponents criticizing specific (for example deregulation) points
- sometimes, there are strong feelings and arguments on both sides of a bill and it makes sense to view them in their entirety; seeing one's side unhinged logic sometimes reveals more about the bill than the bill's text itself
- "same-side" opposition: sometimes a bill is perceived as "left-wing" or "right-wing" but receives opposition from the same side; for example, the democrat party is very divided on helping the rich vs taxing the rich, while the republican party is (less than 20 years ago) divided between hardcore authoritarian trumpists and libertarians defending civil liberties
All in all, i believe AI is a plight for society. We are only starting to understand the ecological and psychological costs. There are areas where machine learning can be useful (translation), but i strongly believe politics is not one of them. Please don't try to apply it to anything serious. Don't take it from me, take it from James Mickens in a talk where he explains both how ML works and how it related to the field of computer security:
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentat...