Publications

Ideas and evidence for technology in the public interest.

Articles, surveys, reports, and proposals from Code iLand about CivicOS, human participation, privacy, and the future of the digital public sphere.

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Publications provide context for our work and make its assumptions open to public examination.

Extended article August 2026 PDF · 14 pages

Civic OS: Toward a Human-Verified Digital Public Sphere

How can a digital platform establish genuine human participation without becoming the custodian of people's identity documents, biometric material, and political choices? This extended article presents the problem and the architecture CivicOS has developed in response.

It follows the participant journey from on-device verification to discussion, identity-separated voting, and a checkable receipt. It also examines the mobile engineering achievement, the democratic values behind the design, and the current trust boundaries that guide the next stage of work.

On-device verification Private participation Auditable civic technology
Concise article August 2026 PDF · 2 pages

Civic OS: Toward a Human-Verified Digital Public Sphere

Online public opinion can be distorted by bots, coordinated accounts, and synthetic identities. This article examines the problem and presents privacy-preserving verification of unique human participation as one building block for a more credible digital public sphere.

It also draws an important boundary: verifying that participants are genuine people does not, by itself, make a platform statistically representative of society.

Digital public sphere Human verification Computational propaganda

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