Brigade Media

On June 4th, 2014, Brigade Beta became available to download on iOS or Google Play, in its private beta version.[1] In this beginning stage, the app asked users to agree or disagree on a position.[9] Brigade then split up its users into those who agreed on the issue and those who disagreed on the issue. Participants were also allowed to write their own opinions on positions and ask those in their respective group if they were "for" or "against" the opinion stated.[9]

A few weeks before the November 2016 elections, Brigade created a ballot guide for its users.[10] It ran these voter guides in San Francisco and Manchester, New Hampshire.[11] As the user entered the application, he or she was prompted with questions regarding government and social issues. One could agree, disagree, or click unsure as their answer choices.[12] After completing the questionnaire, the guide gave recommendations on whom to vote for and which propositions to pass or not pass.[12] Furthermore, the app also determined these choices based on those a user socializes with on Brigade.[10] Brigade users could then pledge their votes to the candidates and propositions listed on the ballot. With these pledges, the app could track which candidates had more pledged votes in real time.[11] Users were further able to recruit pledges from other users for their favorite candidates or propositions.[11]

Brigade implemented a voter verification service as well.[13] With voter verification, a user can determine how similar or different a political representative's viewpoints are from their own.[13] This data was received from Google's Civic API with geographic information on 520,000 American elected officials.[13]

Brigade Media has acquired Causes, Votizen, and Voter.[4][6][14] At the time of its acquisition, Causes was the largest online platform where candidates could campaign.[4] At the time of its acquisition, Votizen functioned as a tool for voters to learn more about their leaders.[4] At the time of its acquisition, Voter aimed to put voters and politicians together via shared viewpoints.[6] These three companies helped Brigade gain social media presence and find intelligent workers in the field.[15]

As technology has advanced, it was assumed that the average individual would have further access to voting, and therefore, voting numbers would increase. Instead, voter turnout at the elections remains low, with numbers at the presidential elections between 50% and 60% of the US population in the last 50 years.[16] At the midterm election of 2014, only 36.4% of people voted, the lowest percentage since 1942.[17] It is hoped that civic technology will incentivize and educate its users to vote. Brigade's voter ballot was an attempt as a civic technology platform to increase voter participation as well as educate its users about candidates and propositions.[12][18]

Barbara Simons, a computer scientist from IBM, asserts that all current forms of digital voting devices are hackable, and that the best unhackable option is paper.[33] Furthermore, a Canadian study revealed that online voting platforms may not improve voter participation.[34] The study found that those who did not already vote on paper ballots did not vote with digital devices.[34] Instead, non-paper voting forms are simply more convenient for those who would have already decided to vote.[34] With this data brought to light, the Independent Panel On Internet Voting did not recommend internet voting to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia in 2012.[35]

Brigade's Executive Chairman, Sean Parker, was the president of Facebook in mid-2004.[36] Recently, Facebook sold information on over 50 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica.[37] Sean Parker's previous relationship with Facebook could provide controversy in his work with Brigade Media and his other projects.

At the company's formation, Brigade Media also faced a racial controversy. When Brigade was only a few weeks old, the entire leadership division of the start-up was white males.[7] The company addressed the issues by filling in 12 additional positions and noting that women were also present in the organization.[7]