When’s the last time you read something that ran counter to your political beliefs?
We’re not talking about a tweet, a Facebook post or a hot-take headline. And we’re not talking about simply being aware that they’re out there either. We’re talking about actually engaging with a story, critique or analysis that offers a thoughtful argument to your stance on an issue. Yes, believe it or not, these are out there — and one student-led startup from the University of Chicago wants to help you find them.
Using a newsletter, mobile app and website, FlipSide aims to curate the best opposing political ideologies in a personalized manner. “We use natural language processing, data visualization techniques and collaborative filtering to actually improve the user experience over time,” said Founder and CEO Siddharth Sachdeva, in an interview with Chicago Inno.
On FlipSide’s website, users fill out a brief questionnaire, providing the startup with information on their personal values, language preferences and argumentative styles. Users receive emails with links to opinion and news content from individuals and media outlets across the political spectrum, curated via an algorithm to ensure content is digestible and doesn’t trigger knee-jerk responses.
While FlipSide is starting off by sending subscriber emails, its overarching goal is to move beyond maximizing clicks and eventually maximizing user engagement — encouraging social shares, comments, and longer responses. "We want to become an opinion aggregator for everyone, think Instagram for opinions," Sachdeva said.
Sachdeva, head of his high school debate team and newspaper, has always been interested in playing devil’s advocate. “Though I personally identified as independent, I once signed on to represent Mitt Romney’s views in a high school with a 95% liberal-leaning student body,” he said. As a Statistics and Computer Science major in the College at the University of Chicago, he noticed even before the election that his social media feed was presenting him with content it knew he would click on, but was essentially reinforcing his existing biases. After gauging interest at a university QuickPitch event, he realized the simultaneous challenge and opportunity in applying machine learning techniques to address how we consume and engage with opposing viewpoints.
“With a focus on presentation and personalization, we want to make openmindedness itself an easier process to embrace.”
FlipSide is free for the time being and was able to sign on about 600 email subscribers in just one week of recruiting, but it intentionally wants to start small and experiment, continuing to build the best version of its product. This summer, it will be one of the ten startups in the University of Chicago Polsky Center’s summer accelerator program, receiving access to mentorship, resources and $10,000 in investment — adding to the $20,000 it won at the university-wide Social New Venture Challenge last month.
Sachdeva has assembled an impressive team of students and advisors to help him build the business. Mentors include former Obama advisor David Axelrod, Stanford-based data journalism pioneer Cheryl Phillips, and co-founder of the prestigious Data Science for Social Good fellowship, Rayid Ghani.
Sachdeva acknowledges that reaching the proverbial "Trump county" voter — the coal miner in West Virginia, or the auto worker in Michigan — is going to be a challenge, and he is seeking the help of advisors, media influencers, and potential community partnerships, as part of FlipSide’s user acquisition strategy.
“There isn’t anything fundamental about one political ideology that renders someone to be more open or close-minded,” he said, citing a June 2016 Pew Research study identifying opportunity across both sides of the aisle. “With a focus on presentation and personalization, we want to make openmindedness itself an easier process to embrace.”
