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points by jonahhorowitz 2 days ago | 0 comments

I've always wanted this. It's such an obvious idea when you're a software engineer.

[–] refurb 2 days ago

The system would be gamed by the politicians.

Insert language you know will never get enough votes

Don’t strike out but add language to make it useless

Plus the bill sponsor often makes changes others ask for, so the true author isn’t noted

It would be a mess and ignored by the public after a while

[–] somenameforme 1 day ago

This is already regularly done. One side or the other will propose or amend a bill that they claim does [popular thing x] and then add in some clause that they know will get voted against, so they can then claim that [other side] voted against [popular thing x].

This is often especially cynical because [popular thing x] is often something that neither party wants to pass. So a very recent example of this was an act against insider trading by politicians, that was bundled with a voter id law. Neither side wants to clamp down on insider trading from politicians, so the entire act was DOA. It was nothing but bread and circuses.

[–] lopis 2 days ago

Git does allow multiple contributors on each commit. Of course people can lie, but it's a matter of policy in the end. Make it a crime to not add all contributors to a diff.

[–] sharpshadow 1 day ago

The politicians wouldn’t have the option to game it if additional data is pulled in automatically like lobbying disclosure filings, public watchdog databases, etc. for the final overview. A swift turn from limiting the total sugar amount in soda would look quite bad if the politician got lobbied by Big Soda.

[–] 3form 2 days ago

Every system gets gamed, and so is the current one. The goal is that the people can more easily stay informed. Even with mixed authors problem you highlight would be still an improvement.

[–] DavidSchor 1 day ago

But there would be a papertrail that can be revisited. And journalists can access to keep people informed of systemic or major issues.

[–] xmprt 1 day ago

There already is a papertrail. It's just that it's extremely convoluted to navigate. This isn't a technology problem.

[–] matwood 1 day ago

Convoluted to navigate sounds like a problem that could be solved with technology…

[–] xmprt 1 day ago

Could be? Yes. But I don't know if it's super clear that any existing technology would solve the problem without also introducing new process changes. For example, I can imagine a world where the laws are just a bunch of text files and instead of using git to make changes, we just add a new text file and there's a preamble that says that the law is superseded by any future laws. Laws also aren't as clear cut as code. We have tons of contradictory laws on the books today.

What I'm getting at is that, if we need to make process changes anyway in order to actually make the technology work for us, then the real solution is in the process and not in the technology.

[–] blitzar 1 day ago

Or just name the pile of slop "The Patriot Act" - then you can legally hang anyone treasonous enough to votes against whatever may be inside.

[–] p-e-w 2 days ago

We don’t need version control for legislative bills. We need journalists that track down who tried to insert what, summarize it, and present it to the public with context. That would satisfy the oversight purpose without getting lost in technicalities.

Our problem is that the press isn’t doing their job, not that legislation doesn’t have a commit graph. The latter, even if it existed, would not fix the former.

[–] hvb2 1 day ago

> Our problem is that the press isn’t doing their job

The general public isn't willing to pay for this, so it's very hard to do this. Especially given that most of this isn't exactly going to generate tons of views.

Let's be honest, in general, the public is very upset about all the injustice they perceive. But the public also lost all interest in the process, some can't even be bothered to vote once every other year....

It's too easy to blame others for your own inaction

[–] dotancohen 1 day ago

  > But the public also lost all interest in the process, some can't even be bothered to vote once every other year....

In the 1920s the German speaking world got a book whose first three chapters just hammer in how important it is for the average citizen to take an interest in his local politics. That book was subsequently banned by almost every European country in the decades since. I'm the only person I know who has personally read it, even though it is one of the most derided books in history.

I highly recommend the first three chapters to anybody who thinks they don't need to understand their local politics.

[–] 1718627440 1 day ago

What book are you referring to?

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

To be fair, it was a major theme of Aristotle’s, too.

[–] neutronicus 1 day ago

Are you referring to Mein Kampf?

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> general public isn't willing to pay for this

The rough truth is you don’t need the general public to. Just the elites, broadly defined.

[–] hvb2 23 hours ago

Because the general public does not, journalism and checking politicians isn't something you can do while breaking even. The result of that is that you need to have someone with a lot of money to back your losses.

And here we are.

[–] bahmboo 2 days ago

I am confused. Someone put in place a system that would allow journalists or citizens to meaningfully engage with the law in a much better way than they can now.

However you are proposing that journalists as a homogenous group do some extra work. I think that's a great thing but I don't get why you say the press aren't doing their job when they are at an historical low of compensation and respect.

If sounds like you are outsourcing your rage at the legislature and the press and journalists are the problem?

Sticking to the FTA someone made a first step in version tracking legislative texts but you do not think they've done enough?

[–] mschuster91 2 days ago

> Our problem is that the press isn’t doing their job

The problem is, barely anyone is willing to pay the press for doing this job.

Outrage farming and clickbait make money, honest reporting does not.

[–] aspect0545 2 days ago

Why not both. I'm sure that more visibility would result in more requests for press inquiries.

[–] msdz 2 days ago

Exactly, it’d make the press’ work easier, and maybe enable more people or entities to look into this topic over all, too.

[–] teiferer 2 days ago

A revision control system is a tool the journalists could use to achieve this. Commits to the 'enacted' branch could have commit messges documenting the context (when, how, why, who). Unmerged branches could represent proposed but ultimately rejected (or still in progress) changes with the same amount of meta data.

Of course a tool itself doesn't solve the problem. You need somebody to use the tool. But the tool makes it easier to solve the problem.

[–] safety1st 2 days ago

We need that too, but the ability to git diff changes to the law is a great win for democracy and transparency in 2026 because git is an interface that agents are experts at using. If you're a journalist, activist or anybody else doing the type of research you just described this makes it faster and easier.

In the present day, mainstream journalists won't be meaningful advocates for democracy and the public interest any time soon. It's time to acknowledge that this idea is wishful thinking. The root cause is changes to the law like the Telecom Act of 1996 which allowed for the consolidation of old media under a few corporations.

For many years these mainstream journalists have been required to support corruption, cronyism, the centralization of power, and the increase of corporate power in order to retain their jobs. The law needs to be changed before they can become a net benefit to society again.

[–] crabmusket 1 day ago

> because git is an interface that agents are experts at using

I'd actually argue that this is the wrong way around. Being able to git diff legislation is very good, but mainly for humans, who need tools to make work tractable.

An agent will use whatever interface is available, including no interference, won't give up due to the task being too onerous, and can be scaled by paying for more tokens. It could simply brute force diff the raw text, writing bespoke Python and regexes, etc.

LLMs make brute forcing intellect possible. It's humans who need finely crafted tools.

[–] zoobab 1 day ago

I am sure with LLMs the time to craft those tools to fetch the data and put them back in a git repo (for example one repo per legislative project) would not be too hard to do.

[–] Gormo 1 day ago

I don't think that the problem with legislative transparency is that there aren't enough middlemen sitting between the public and the legislative process.

I'm personally not interested in being dependent on the press -- which is just other people pursuing their own interests and assumptions -- to interpret artificially opaque sources, if those sources can just be made accessible instead.

Having a dynamic and pluralistic press is a good thing, and we need more investigative journalism, to discover what isn't visible to the public, but I'm not sure there's a lot of value in the sort of interpretive journalism you're proposing.

[–] faangguyindia 2 days ago

Until journalists can be paid under the table to mislead the public, the problem will persist. Almost anyone can be bought on a Friday night for the price of a few drinks and benefits.

[–] callmeal 2 days ago

>Our problem is that the press isn’t doing their job ...

Well, it's practically impossible to get a person to do something when their paycheck depends on their not doing it.

[–] sixdimensional 2 days ago

Same. What I would like to see is Git for non-technical users, built as a public platform that is open source, hosting this.

I do think there are some Markdown-based open source projects that might fit the bill.

[–] p-e-w 2 days ago

There are a million frontends designed to simplify Git for non-programmers. In fact, lots of office software now has version management built-in. Very few people use it. This isn’t a technology problem.

[–] hnlmorg 1 day ago

To be fair, version control built into office suits are often hidden away or have other UX patterns that aren’t comfortable for nontechnical folk. So they either still get scared by it, or don’t even know it exists.

Yet there is a demand for version control for nontechnical people. And I know this because I’ve seen enough files called “copy of important thing” or “important thing 2”.

[–] sixdimensional 1 day ago

Yes, thank you, I agree exactly with your comment. Track changes doesn't seem to have the right user experience for non-technical users.

[–] p-e-w 1 day ago

> Yet there is a demand for version control for nontechnical people. And I know this because I’ve seen enough files called “copy of important thing” or “important thing 2”.

This demonstrates LACK OF demand for technical version control, since the system you describe has been used since forever and found to be good enough.

[–] hnlmorg 1 day ago

No. It demonstrates nontechnical people adapting the skills they’re familiar with to suit a requirement they have.

It doesn’t prove that they don’t want a better solution should it have the right UX. And, as I said in my original comment, the current UX for version control in documents both sucks and is often hidden away where people might not even be aware it exists.

[–] phoghed 1 day ago

Track changes in office is used heavily. Version history in Google Docs also

[–] talon8635 1 day ago

They’d use some hyper-expensively-licensed Google/Microsoft doc web product far before even considering git

[–] unsnap_biceps 2 days ago

Wouldn't a wiki basically be exactly that?

[–] sixdimensional 1 day ago

Yes, it is, but the issue is ease of use for non-technical users.

I was trying to avoid naming any products on purpose, but, for example, there is a commercial product that is easy enough for most people and affordable that would work for this- and there are a few open source clones that come close.

The open source clones are not quite polished enough for non-technical users, but they are the closest thing I can think of, basically crossing over a wiki + Markdown for knowledgebase creation with Git-like versioning.