Values Commons is an evolving backend for decentralized personalization and customization of digital, civic tools like other nodes of the Futurism Institute. Bentley Moon, who makes it
Rank everyday choices by what you care about.
Tell it what matters to you. It ranks real options, like coffee, banks and phone apps, on facts that each show where they came from. Nobody can pay to be first, and you can challenge any fact.
Rather be walked through it? Take the two-minute tour.
Want to kick the tires? Drag a slider. Nothing breaks.
Behind this is the sky over Seattle right now, computed in your browser from the clock.
Adjust a priority and the list reorders at once, computed in your browser.
See every factor, weigh each one, and read what it measures
Each ? says what a factor measures and how to weigh it wisely. The guides go deeper: open the guides library →
- 1Local roaster co-op79member disclosure · strong on fair pay
- 2Fairtrade supermarket line78Fairtrade Intl. · strong on fair pay
- 3Single-origin specialty71Open Food Facts · strong on gentle processing
- 4Global brand, house blend56company filing · strong on price
- 5Budget instant44Open Food Facts · strong on price
Plate IFig. 1. The coffee ranking, one step at a time.
How a ranking is made
The coffee sample above, split into the four steps that produce its order. Change a slider in the sample and these numbers change with it.
1What you care about
Saved as a small file on your device that holds your weights and hard lines. No identity, no account.
Your values file →2What is known about each option
Facts about Local roaster co-op, from its member disclosure
Every fact names its source and the date it was checked.
Where facts come from →3The arithmetic
Each fact times the share you gave it, added up. A missing fact counts as a neutral 50 and is never guessed.
The method in plain words →4Your ranking
Anyone who checks gets the same order from the same inputs, and nobody can pay to change it.
Try it on a real decision →What's happening. The four steps that turn your weights into an order. These numbers change when you move the sample's sliders.
Why it matters. Most rankings you meet were ordered by someone else's priorities, usually whoever paid for the top spot. This one runs on yours, and every step of it is on the page.
Devil's advocate. The coffee is made up. Five types stand in for thousands of real bags. And an average can hide one terrible fact behind four good ones, which is why hard lines exist, and why the app caps a score when something you care about a lot scores 20 or less.
Rabbit hole. How scores are calculated, then the worked formula on the standard's page, which runs the real engine.
Three experiments to run on Fig. 1
Guess the winner before you press, then check the four steps above.
- Exp. 1Make price the thing that matters most.
- Exp. 2Care mostly about the world.
- Exp. 3Care mostly about yourself.
Other tools that use the same files
- Group agreement
- Put several values files side by side. Everyone's hard lines hold, and where you disagree stays on the page.
- Shared plan
- What a group decides to do. It keeps the reason for each step, and who disagreed.
- Fact repair
- Send a correction with its source. Once it is checked, the fact changes for everyone, and the change stays on record.
- Ownership map
- Who owns a brand is a fact with a receipt too, so a look-alike choice can be traced to whoever is behind it.
Hard lines are checked before any arithmetic, so an allergen or a boycott removes an option outright. Set yours.
Plate IIFig. 2. How many decisions on the map have an answer. The hatched part of each bar is decisions nobody has built yet.
Where it stands
About one decision in eight has an answer today. The map was drawn first, on purpose, so the gaps show.
What it can answer today
The map of everyday life names 1,068 decisions. 130 of them have an answer you can use today. The rest are named and waiting to be built.
| Food and drink | 50 of 133 | |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | 19 of 99 | |
| Personal care | 16 of 83 | |
| Home | 10 of 165 | |
| Media and culture | 5 of 71 | |
| Money | 5 of 54 | |
| Transport | 4 of 55 | |
| Clothing | 3 of 67 | |
| Health | 3 of 79 | |
| Learning | 3 of 43 | |
| Animals | 3 of 33 | |
| Civic life and giving | 3 of 31 | |
| Organizations | 3 of 24 | |
| Family and care | 2 of 60 | |
| Travel | 1 of 43 | |
| Work and livelihood | 0 of 28 |
answered todaynamed on the map, not built yet
Map of 23 Sept 202616 areas1,068 decisions130 answered922 open13 held back3 out of scope
Biggest hole in the map: Home, with 154 decisions still unanswered.
What changed lately
28 sources marked as due for a fresh check, in bicycles, crowdfunding platforms, e-bikes and 6 more.
New comparisons: Browsers and Messaging. Facts rebuilt in Browsers and Messaging.
Guides rewritten: AI assistants, Clothing, Digital literacy and 5 more.
New comparisons: Direct-drive solar, Federated social servers, Off-grid power systems and Self-hosting platforms. New guides: Credit cards, Direct-drive solar, Federated social servers and 4 more. Facts rebuilt in AI assistants, Banking, Credit cards and 6 more.
Each line comes from the data itself, tied to the change that made it. Sources get marked for a fresh check when they pass their review date.
If you read four guides, read these, in this order
- 1
Vote with your money: where to start
What your spending pays for, and a plain place to begin.
- 2
Which purchases carry the most weight
Why a bank account or a phone plan matters more than a chocolate bar.
- 3
How scores are calculated
Exactly how a number is made, so you can trust it or argue with it.
- 4
Leaving locked-in software
How to get your things out of a service that makes leaving hard.
Plate IIIFig. 3. The three apps and what they share.
The apps and what they share
Three apps use the same engine and the same file formats, so a values file you make in one works in the others.
Apps you use
Conscious Consuming, the main app: where to bank, eat, shop and give·Kosplora, a demo: where to learn·Where to Message, a demo: which messenger·See other apps built on it →
Shared by all of them
Your values file (step 1)·Sourced facts (step 2)·The engine (step 3)
The rules underneath
The Open Values Standard: the file formats any app can follow, so anyone can build another app on the same files. For builders, at openvaluesstandard.org.
Bentley Moon makes it, at the Futurism Institute.
What it will not do, and how to check
| The promise | How you can check it |
|---|---|
| No ads and no pay-to-rank | The order is facts times your weights. Step 3 above is the whole formula, and the app shows it for every score. |
| No account and no tracking | There is no sign-in anywhere. Your values file stays on your device unless you send it to someone. |
| Every fact shows its source | Open any score in the app and each fact links the page it came from. Every release is checked for a fact without a source, and fails if it finds one. |
| It says when the evidence is thin | 300+ measures are published as withheld, next to the 400+ that earned a top mark. |
| Same inputs, same result | The code and data are public, so anyone can rerun a ranking and compare. Source, data and audits. |
| Yours to keep | It works offline and fits on a flash drive. If you dislike how it is run, take a copy and run your own. |
If you catch it breaking one of these, write in.
Help make it better
Correct a fact with a source, build the next subject area, or tell us what is wrong. A household, congregation or co-op can run its own copy, because the whole thing is a folder of files anyone can copy. What funding would pay for.
Values Commons is one project of the Futurism Institute. Why it exists, and how it fits with the others, is on the Institute's design page.