Etha.one

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Introduction

Etha is an American social networking and media service that’s focused on bringing transparency and accountability into the democratic process. The company’s online platform allows users to track and discuss recent policies and laws that politicians are working on, or have passed. Registered users (members) are able to gauge public views about political candidates in an unbiased manner, submit their own content from/about each politician’s newsworthy actions, and compare relevant event coverage to see how the news media ‘spins’ stories on various media outlets. Unregistered users can see all content, but are unable to engage with, comment on, or view the profiles of other users. Those using the application can interact with Etha through browser or mobile frontend software with APIs.This service is provided free of charge by Elkool Inc., an NYC-based corporation with  global operations in ten countries, mostly working from remote locations.

At its core offering, it provides a dynamically calculated public sentiment score for each politician, also known as the ‘LeaderQ’ score, which is algorithmically computed in real-time from a number of factors.  These include the votes of support or disapproval from the platform’s users, as well as the contextual sentiment expressed in their commentary.  Users are able to upload relevant content in the form of unlimited text, picture, and video pertaining to the focal political issues as they pertain to the politicians being covered by the platform.  For each politician’s trending issues, the platform presents a curated list of related media coverage, from multiple sources representing a wide political spectrum.  Each publication is accompanied by the political bias indicator, as determined by the platform’s AI.  This informs the members of any bias inherently woven into each news story, without creating or modifying any news content. By doing so, the company avoids injecting any bias into discourse on its platform, while letting its users make better informed decisions by presenting a balanced perspective from publications across the political spectrum.  The cloud-based platform is currently open to all countries, but its focus is primarily on US politics. Users are able to interact with others, across the entire political spectrum, to discuss the latest political developments, along with their political leaders, in a neutral forum designed to mitigate the effect of ideological “bubbles.” While the platform touts completely open access to the public, regardless of their political ideology, it still enforces constructive discourse by detecting and moving destructive or derogatory conversations into separate virtual rooms. Etha promotes political awareness by providing an educational content section, as well as a public polling serviceEtha was created by Nicole Ogloza and Aastik Saini in June of 2021, and launched on Independence day (US) of that year.  The original founders have arrived at the idea behind the service as a way to reduce the widening divisions between the country’s Democratic and Republican voters.  The political divisions have been growing at an alarming rate for over two decades, threatening to tear apart the very fabric of American democracy. The platform had over 3,000 users in the beginning of 2022, and is continuing to drive user growth while releasing a slew of additional social media capabilities in time for US Midterm Elections. The company is actively continuing to develop its cloud platform, adding new features on weekly basis. All user content is unmoderated, giving users a space to discuss important topics with others without restrictions to their freedom of speech. However, any discussion that takes a derogatory/destructive tone (as determined by in-house developed algorithms and community feedback) may be automatically moved into a separate virtual room.

History

2021-Present : Creation and Initial Reaction

Etha’s origins lie in the ideation between Nicole Ogloza and Ambarish Gupta. At that time, having lost her job at Warner Media due to Covid-19,  Nicole Ogloza was looking for a mentor. The two ended up forming a partnership and founded Etha. When Nicole received a job offer in New York City, she and Ambarish began discussing ideas for a social media platform dedicated to bringing transparency and accountability to modern politics. Having confirmed that no such platform existed, they outlined a cloud application strategy focused on exposing and eliminating bias in the news, while mitigating the destructive impact of misinformation in politics. Ultimately, this became Etha. The original name of the company was ‘Elkool,’ which was chosen because the word means “alcohol” (i.e., the universal “truth serum”) in multiple languages. Upon further reflection, Nicole proposed changing the name from Elkool to Etha - implying the platform’s great potential to infuse a greater degree of ethics into the world of politics, news coverage, and political discourse. The shorter name was also inspired by Facebook’s rebranding to ‘Meta,’ an easy to pronounce, four-character word. Elkool still remains the parent company, and adheres to the same core values - to serve  distilled truth to the general public, provide a nation-wide forum for better understanding between divergent political perspectives, and keeping both elected and appointed political representatives accountable. Etha.one further embodies the core meaning behind its domain – pairing ethics and distilled truth under ‘one roof” – exposing bias in the information being disseminated to the general public by mainstream news and social media, which, in the recent years, have been increasingly called out for propagating  increasingly polarized news content at a record breaking rate. Elkool.com was the original domain, migrating to the Etha.one domain after rebranding.

The first prototype of Etha was created in late June 2021, with co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Aastik Saini. From there, Nicole gathered several professionals who share her passion for transparency in political news and fostering constructive discourse between all constituents, regardless of where their views fit on the political spectrum. Today, Etha is still operating on zero investment, with a team of nearly 40 people from multiple domains of expertise, representing 10 different countries around the world, on a volunteer basis. In addition to mitigating bias in the media, it is also working on educating users on political matters. The platform grants its users  freedom of speech without the highly controversial censorship practices commonly deployed by the mainstream social networks.  All political topics provide an educational resource to increase public engagement on voting for the candidates who, based on their transparently represented record on the key issues, will best represent their values. With the platform’s continuous evolution, the founders plan on releasing frequent, regular updates with new features, based on its users’ input, to create a constructive and social media that is fair for everyone - regardless of their political affiliations.

Taking best practices from platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, Etha accentuates the constructive impact that social media can provide to the general public, while mitigating its well-documented manipulative, and often harmful effects aimed at tearing apart the very fabric of our community. It does this through education, organized information, and a system design that provides freely flowing conversations without banning users. In doing so, Etha is committed to a constructive approach that leads to a healthy exchange of ideas.

Leadership

Nicole Ogloza serves as Chief Executive Officer, driving operations and marketing strategy, Aastik Saini acts as Chief Technology Officer, who handles platform development and its technology roadmap, Dimitry Kushelevsky serves as the Chief Operations Officer, leading the company’s strategic direction and its tactical execution, and handling day-to-day product management and user acquisition.

Ambarish Gupta signed on as the general board member overseeing strategy on June 1, 2021. He later brought on his partner, Ajay Shrivastava, who was the head of product on the board for operations at Basis Vectors. Both are focused and dedicated to developing Etha’s business  and have committed to help raise funds up to $110 million dollars over the course of Etha’s growth and evolution. Both advisors are well known in the India Tech startup scene and have made numerous successful investments in companies like LegalPay, Infinita Labs, Hirexp and AVOCADO. Ambarish Gupta previously exited Knowlarity, in 2018, which he built from the ground-up. Knowlarity became India's largest cloud telephony company, with Ajay Srivastava serving as its Chief Operations Officer. Ajay Shrivastava also served as the Technical Head of OYO Rooms and is the Chief Product and Technology Officer of one of India’s largest media companies, HT Media Limited.

List of Board Members:

1. Amabrish Gupta (2020-present)
2. Nicole Ogloza (2020-present)
3. Ajay Shrivastava (2021-present)
4. Aastik Saini (2021-present)
5. Dimitry Kushelevsky (2021-present)

Ownership and Funding

Etha is a private corporation. It has raised $45,000 from personal funds and company directors, with near-term plans to raise a pre-seed round of $1,000,000 from a group of venture capital, private equity and angel investors. Ambairsh Gupta and Ajay Shrivastava will lead the initial investment rounds through Basis Vectors. When completed, along with a partnership with Let’s Venture of India, the company will secure a pre-seed round of $1,000,000.

Etha also invites the public to invest in its initial investment round through third party platforms like WeFunder

Application Appearance and Key Features

Etha’s content and policies are visible by default, and registered users have the option to vote, comment, and share insights from the platform with other sites and individuals. User registration is open and free to everyone.  Registered users receive a personalized,  dynamically curated news feed of articles and video reports covering the latest political developments that are most relevant to them.  As the news reports are posted to the users’ timeline, the platform algorithmically identifies any inherent bias present in the story.  Etha does not modify the original publications in any way.  However, it does present the user with its assessment of the direction and degree of bias in each report, empowering the users to make appropriate conclusions about its content.  The users are able to interact with other community members to engage in meaningful discussion, and share what they have learned through the platform. Users can also block or restrict those whom they don’t want their profiles to interact with. While initially all of the content is based on US politics, users from other countries can also contribute to conversations with a registered account. They can offer feedback on policy development, or provide suggestions on how matters can be fixed.  While Etha offers free and open access to the platform for anyone with a computer or a mobile device, it also has the ability to narrow down the originating geography of user input for opinion polling and data analytics. Opinions can be aggregated and then presented in a dashboard-like setting, which allows politicians to see how their policy is affecting the general public. The intention is to inspire more informed decisions throughout the law-making process, and incentivizing the lawmakers to take the voice of the people into greater consideration, so as to create well-informed policies that produce better outcomes for their constituents.

Votes, Comments and Sharing

Etha’s platform allows for three main counters, including votes, comments, and shares. It features typical social media components such as “like” and “dislike” buttons for users to express support or opposition on specific topics. Votes about a politician’s issue or statement are aggregated into a percentage to show how the public feels about the topic, whether it be a reaction to something that a politician has said, or about a policy (they’re involved in) that is in the making. Each vote is incorporated into the politicians public sentiment score (LeaderQ), in real-time, to express a dynamic report card for that politician. The likes and dislikes will be displayed on a pie chart in green and red, respectively, to indicate the members’ support level for the politician’s latest action. Being an integral part of Etha’s platform, live voting increases the engagement of the general public to showcase the constituents’ feelings about politicians, and provide powerful insights in order to help create better laws and policies. Each statement or issue presented on the platform also comes with public polling opinions where users can comment and interact with others to discuss individual policies, and participate in formulating potential solutions by providing input that is shared directly with the politicians working on them. A sharing counter helps spread the word, further increasing engagement with the platform and bringing in more people to join the causes they care about. Each of these counters contributes to a LeaderQ score, which acts as a dynamic public sentiment timeline of a politician’s tenure. It shows how they are tracking against their promises to the public, and provides data that can be used in debates on the platform between users.

Applicaiton Interface and Trending Issues

Etha presents an array of hot-topic buttons, each representing the latest developments in the areas of social, education, domestic policy, foreign policy, national security, housing, transportation, economy, immigration, environmental, criminal, electoral, healthcare, and science. Trending issues are formulated from the amount of activity taking place on the web and social media, and paired with users’ engagement on each topic on Etha’s own platform, dynamically generating a list of the most important issues to be dealt with, as perceived by the general public. Each trending issue is updated on an hourly basis with aggregated data from the internet, TV and news media. Data is shown at the top of each issue so that users can pick an area of focus based on what matters to them most. Additionally, they can debate on how to solve issues with other members of the Etha community. Users will also be able to present their own understanding of each story and its background, in contrast to how TV and news media moderates content, while often promoting their own biased narrative, when covering political events. Etha showcases multiple perspectives from various ideologies, identifying the inherent bias in each piece.  This helps to expose and minimize the negative effects of polarization designed to distort the public perception of events. Additionally, individual issues can have a dedicated educational space for learning about the topics, while empowering users with tools to back up their arguments and form well-balanced opinions.

Mobile Apps

Etha is available via mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. The platform can also be accessed from a desktop browser or a mobile phone browser without downloading applications. The download size of the application is 25-megabytes, and it is accessible in every country in English, with a current focus on the United States.

LeaderQ Score

The ‘LeaderQ’ score is a dynamically quantified value that represents people’s opinions regarding certain politicians and policies they’re working on. Each user will also be able to have their own unique LeaderQ score, depending on the amount and quality of content that they produce on the platform. LeaderQ scores vary over time for users, politicians, or public figures, depending on how other members react, interact and use the platform.

Usage

Daily user estimates vary and Etha does not provide statistics on created accounts or users. The user retention rate also varies. It is currently around 51% as a weekly calculated average. At the time of this writing, Etha has a monthly growth rate of 7% and has increased from 600 users to 15,766 users since the beta-product launch in March 2022 to present. As of April 2022, Etha is being used in 23 countries.

Branding

Etha is identified with its signature logo: an ‘E’ with rabbit ears. The original logo was the word Elkool with a slashed text message icon, which was in use starting from its prototype concept in July 2021. The new rabbit ear logo was created by a user interface expert and in-house designer, Richard Enuenweisu, in late-October, 2021. The meaning behind the logo, as Richard describes, is a neutral figure as opposed to the Republican elephant or the Democrat donkey.

The Etha Rabbit logo from October 23, 2021 to present.

Value proposition to the politicians and appointed gov’t leaders

Etha is in a unique position to offer politicians and their campaigns powerful, accurate insights into their constituents’ views on the high-priority issues they are working on. Unlike legacy internet opinion polling services, Etha’s platform offers significantly more trustworthy polls and analytics, owing to the insights they are able to develop from the community engagement on their platform.

Additional Background

More on the purpose behind Etha, as a platform for objective political discussion

Most of today’s news media outlets are biased to favor one of the opposing parties. As per survey, statistics shows that 81% of Americans feel that the news media is very biased. Media has a very significant role in transforming the culture and setting up the narrative for upcoming generations. Today’s media is dramatically impacting the political ecosystem because of its omnipresent biases and plotted narratives, designed to favor the party of publisher’s choice.

Etha’s role in promoting the democratic process

The democratic process is the backbone of any democratic country. To keep our  democracy strong, there is an urgent need for a platform designed for objective political discussion. This platform itself must follow the democratic process. This need implies that diverse, well-balanced content and news are  brought to the public, and by the public. When interacting on the platform, users can discuss their political opinions in an open, democratic setup, knowing that they are under no threat of being banned [for voicing unpopular opinions], and they are protected by the company’s AI, which detects instances of “toxic” or destructive dialogue, and moves the offending conversations into separate rooms, away from the common discussion. All the community members are able to check the reaction to their opinions from the public, as well as contribute their own opinions for other members’ consideration.

More about Etha’s public sentiment/approval rating

Etha’s platform generates and updates a LeaderQ score, based on the public engagement around the politicians and their actions pertaining to  specific issues. The LeaderQ score  is a dynamically calculated grade, by which a community member can easily gauge the performance of a politician or government official. Etha provides detailed insights into the LeaderQ score, with which the general public can check how any  politician’s performance varied over a period of time based on his/her activities. As a public approval rating, it provides constant feedback to the political/government ecosystem from their grassroots constituencies. It is important to note that the goal behind the platform is not to be punitive, but to help the people in power guide their political activities in a way that’s in sync with the needs of people who elected them into office.

Building political awareness

Lack of political awareness is a serious impediment to a healthy democracy. As a social media service specifically dedicated to politics, Etha is committed to promoting non-partisan political education, and fostering greater levels of voter participation in the nation’s democratic process. Fueled by the platform’s  gamification features, members of its community  are actively engaging by both sharing and debating their views on the most pertinent political content of the day. Owing to the platform’s ability to call out the degree of political bias found in its curated content, the platform increases its users’ political awareness, while also holding its publishers transparent and accountable for any misrepresentation of the news in their coverage.

References

This article "Etha.one" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Etha.one. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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