Tech and Democracy: How Can Both Be Connected to Create Trust? with Nexus Politics (EP 27)
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What does “trust in politics” mean to a democracy founder?
Hello and welcome to the In-Between Tech and Trust podcast. My name is Eva Lihotsky, and in today's episode, I talk to Magnus Strobel. He is co-founder of the startup Nexus Politics. And together with his team, Magnus is on the mission to bring trust to the democratic process. We dive into his approach, his limitations, and also the challenges that what he has encountered so far. Welcome Magnus to the In Between Tech and Trust podcast.
Thank you Eva. Pleasure to be here.
You've just founded a company or a startup in the intersection of democracy and also society. And when you now think about tech and trust, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
Simply said, it can be improved, to be honest. So that's so that's what we're trying to achieve with Nexus politics. I I think there's room to go. Um there's so much that pe that can be done these days that couldn't be done like in a coup uh like a couple of years back. Especially when I think of AI, the advancements there, what what's possible now with like aggregating individual opinions, like analyzing it and also deriving like policy insights. uh policy recommendations out of it. So I guess there's there's so much that can be done and should be improved, and that's what we are trying to achieve with Nexus Politics.
And so your company sits at the intersection of like technology and also the society or voters, so to say. And if we zoom out, politics is one of the domains of where trust is perceived as quite fragile and also challenged right now. In your founding history, what was the moment when you realized that technology can play a different role.
Yeah, that's a good question. I think there was no specific moment where I realized like now that's the point in time where I think we we should get it started. It was more like a gradual process. Um, like from both sides. I mean, one one one side is like the technical aspects of it, the enabler technologies which are out there these days. But on the other side it's the demand side, so the political side, I guess, where we have seen this constant deterioration trust in politics and also a lack of yeah, like or like people just being dissatisfied with how democracy functions, which is like the core problem we are trying to address. And I guess the combination out of the two made me think and um also my my co founder so um it's not just my idea, it's also my my co founder, uh Christoph Waffler's idea on um yeah building Nexus politics as
How did Magnus identify the need for a digital democracy platform?
as a device or as a platform in order to bring trust back into politics.
Can you iterate a bit on how you do it? Because I mean the ambition is quite important, but also quite challenging to translate it into tech and to navigate that space of the personal perception of the voters and like democracy as an institution and particularly in which environment are you stepping into?
Yeah. So uh product itself I I typically call it like a digital democracy platform or also operating system for digital democracy. So what we're trying to achieve is like we're addressing the problem of dissatisfaction with how democracy functions. So this is very important. We're not addressing like the issue of unsatis or dissatisfaction with democracy itself, but rather like how it works. So the process Behind. And what we're trying to achieve is more participation as the first element. The second element is transparency. And the third one is accountability. And what we are doing in particular, in order to address these topics, is uh first and foremost, we want to give people uh a voice, an opinion, uh like that they can easily share or voice their opinions by coming on our website, having like a chat interface.
There where um the chat interface gives them the opportunity to voice the opinions, ask questions, digs deeper just to get like a broader sense of the problem or the issue the person has. And then we analyze it with artificial intelligence in order to route it directly to the responsible politicians or political actors. And then we give those politicians like the whole toolkit or set of governance.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What does “trust in politics” mean to a democracy founder?
0:06–2:43
2
How did Magnus identify the need for a digital democracy platform?
2:43–6:26
3
What are the core components of Nexus Politics – participation, transparency, and accountability?
6:26–10:11
4
Why is a for‑profit model used to guarantee political neutrality?
10:11–14:19
5
How does the platform map the gap between citizen opinion and politician actions in real time?
14:19–17:56
6
What do politicians really want from civic‑tech tools and how reliable is their feedback?
17:56–21:36
7
Can technology rebuild democratic trust or does it risk deepening division?
21:36–25:28
8
What is the long‑term vision for Nexus Politics and its impact on democracy?
25:28–30:58
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The In-Between Tech and Trust Podcast
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Leading When AI Outruns Expertise - Wolf Ingomar Faecks (EP 35)
Co-Opting Agentic Matter and Transcending Exotic Computing: Where Frontier Technologies Evolve - Dr. Zina Jarrahi Cinker (EP 34)
AI Governance Structures To Ensure Trust - Solo Episode (EP 33)