It just occurred to me today that several private corporations have huge a huge opportunity to improve our representative democracy.  Perhaps, we do as well.  One of the difficulties in a representative democracy is the literacy level of the electorate.  I constantly hear impassioned pleas from people online for us to vote a certain way or donate to a charity.  Most of these posts are disappointing in that they are simple forwards that someone decided to agree with on their basic surface emotional appeal.

Here is my proposal:
When one of these "help the poor children in some random place" comments comes in, in order to "like" or "repost", the user should be required to explain exactly what aid efforts are in place, who the key players are and what the intended and likely outcomes of their actions are.  If they are unable to find the information or don't care, they shouldn't be able to forward on the post.

This should be the same with political posts, it is a simple thing to parse a post for the words "federal reserve" and then require a few multiple choice questions about what the federal reserve is and does or the monetary system in general before passing on a post with a factual label.  I don't think this should be the place of the government but instead should be something that we take the initiative to do as individuals.  The number of people who blindly comply with emotional appeals or vote in line with the most likable character is far too high to get functional results in our society.

I think that we could code a simple app for this, it might surprise people how little they actually know about civics and perhaps persuade them that one more uninformed vote probably will not be helpful to our society.