{"id":2073,"date":"2026-05-01T01:35:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T01:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/?page_id=2073"},"modified":"2026-05-20T17:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T17:41:09","slug":"call-a-democrat-republican","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/call-a-democrat-republican\/","title":{"rendered":"Call a Democrat\/Republican"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"This is a tech idea based on this experiment<\/a> in which Democrats in San Francisco and Republicans in Abilene, Texas, were given a chance to talk to each other on the phone.<\/p>\n

The idea is a phone app called “Call a Democrat or Republican” or twin apps called “Call a Democrat” and “Call a Republican.” Either would work this way:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The user chooses the right app or mode based on their own political orientation and clicks the Call button.<\/li>\n
  2. They are connected with the first person of the opposite party who clicks Call next (or the first person of the other party who clicked Call and is currently waiting for a connection).<\/li>\n
  3. Neither is given any information about the other. (Not their numbers or even names.) They introduce themselves to each other and can talk as long as they like.<\/li>\n
  4. If the other party proves abusive, they can be flagged, and a certain number of justified flaggings will disable an account. Meanwhile, the user will never be connected with the other party again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Moderation will be the hardest part of the app. The TOS will have to be clear that conversations will be recorded and kept for some period of time in order to verify claims of abusive talk, and it might be optimal to have an AI layer judge those claims before a human is called upon for final decisions or to adjudicate appeals.<\/p>\n

    If anyone would like to try making this happen, please do go for it. I’m especially hoping that some group dedicated to bridging the political divide, like Braver Angels<\/a> or\u00a0The National Institute for Civil Discourse<\/a> will take this on.<\/p>\n

    __________________________________<\/p>\n

    This is one of my two tech ideas for bridging the political divide<\/a>. Here’s the other one<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is a tech idea based on this experiment in which Democrats in San Francisco and Republicans in Abilene, Texas, were given a chance to talk to each other on the phone. The idea is a phone app called “Call a Democrat or Republican” or twin apps called “Call a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2076,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2073","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2073"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2097,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2073\/revisions\/2097"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorfreeman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}