Frequently asked questions

What is YouCongress?

YouCongress is an open-source platform that helps inform AI-safety policy decisions by surfacing nuanced public and expert opinion. We use a system of delegated polling—allowing users to cast their own vote or delegate to a trusted panel—and enrich each poll with sourced quotes from domain authorities. More about this on our LessWrong post.

What can users do?

YouCongress is still in its infancy, but you already can:

• explore sourced quotes from experts and public figures
• vote and share your perspective (votes are private unless you publish a comment).
• delegate to trusted experts, public figures and other users. You'll vote as the majority of your delegates — unless you vote directly. In the future, we plan to add topic-based delegation and other delegation mechanisms.
• create new liquid-democracy polls

What are YouCongress delegates?

YouCongress users can choose a list of delegates, similar to following others on social media. However, here, users' votes align with the majority of their delegates unless they vote personally. For example, if a user has five delegates who have voted on an issue, and three of them vote in favor while two vote against, the user's vote will automatically be in favor too. This holds unless the user votes directly, in which case the delegates' votes don't matter.

Future enhancements will introduce additional delegation mechanisms, including topic-specific delegation. This will enable users to appoint delegates for votes concerning specific areas such as their local community, economic matters, AI-related issues, and more.

Users will be able to filter the results by direct votes and delegated votes. This way, if one is only interested in direct votes, the platform will remain useful.

How do sourced quotes work?

YouCongress allows users to add real quotes from notable figures and experts to enrich poll discussions.

All quotes must be accompanied by a source URL so anyone can verify that the public figure or expert actually said that. This ensures the integrity and trustworthiness of the information shared on the platform.

These sourced quotes help inform voters by providing expert perspectives and documented positions on various topics.

How are quotes verified? How can I help verify?

Quotes on YouCongress can be marked as verified once a human reviewer confirms that the quote matches the cited source and is relevant to the poll. Until then, quotes appear as unverified.

Want to help verify quotes? Email us at verify@youcongress.org and we will get you set up.

How can I change/delete content attributed to me?

If you find any quotes or content incorrectly attributed to you, please contact us at support@youcongress.org and we'll address it promptly.

Who is behind YouCongress?

YouCongress was started by Hector Perez (feel free to reach him by email). Hector has been involved in related projects such as creating a liquid-democracy political party with 300 members in Spain in 2008. Also, while working in London, co-founding the non-profit project agreelist.org to track public figures' opinions.

Other key contributors include Gonzalo Cardenete.

How can I contribute?

Sure, welcome to YouCongress!

The easiest way to start is by adding sourced quotes to polls.

If you're a developer, you can contribute on our open source codebase on GitHub Also, feel free to contact hector@youcongress.org