Plurality in Israel

In Israel, no Hebrew translation of *Plurality* has been found, nor any Hebrew-language reporting on the book or on Weyl. What turned up were interviews with and profiles of Tang, and reporting on X's Community Notes. It cannot be said for certain that no translation exists.

In a sharply divided society, can online tools help people listen to each other more calmly? In 2023, a reporter from an Israeli newspaper put exactly that question to Audrey Tang of Taiwan (אודרי טאנג in Hebrew). This article traces how the book Plurality by Tang and E. Glen Weyl, and the topics connected to it, have been discussed in Israel.

In short

The survey for this article found no Hebrew translation of Plurality [1]. Nor did it find any Hebrew-language reporting that takes up the book or Weyl.

What it found were interviews with and profiles of Tang, and reporting on X's (formerly Twitter's) Community Notes (in Hebrew, "הערות הקהילה") [2][3]. However, access to the catalog of the National Library of Israel was blocked, so it could not be used. It therefore cannot be said for certain that no Hebrew translation exists.

For example

An interview in Tel Aviv (June 28, 2023). A reporter from the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth interviewed Tang. The reporter said that, because of the political conflict between left and right, every Saturday this area is closed off as many people take to the streets. The reporter then asked: "If we take this instrument to our democracy in Israel, do you think this is going to be much more polite for people to listen to each other" [2].

Tang's answer was that the tool does not work on abstract topics: "This tool only works when you talk about the specific case". In Taiwan's debate on same-sex marriage, Tang said, the question chosen was not the definition of marriage but a specific one: the welfare and rights of children not yet born [2]. In the transcript, the reporter does not name which protests were meant [2].

Notes on the prime minister's posts (December 2024). According to TheMarker reporter רפאלה גויכמן (Rafaela Goichman), Community Notes had begun to be used in Israel a year earlier. Goichman wrote that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's posts had received 13 notes in the previous two months [3]. → Community Notes

In more detail

The book and translations

The book has 160 "forks" on GitHub (copies that others have made in order to work on them) (a provisional count by this site, October 2026). None of them contains a Hebrew directory. Hebrew (he) is also absent from the list of languages on the book's site, plurality.net [1].

Searching Hebrew-language Google News for "גלן וייל" and "Glen Weyl" turned up no articles about Weyl himself. Hebrew Wikipedia has no article on Weyl either. → What editions and translations of Plurality exist?

How Tang has been introduced

Hebrew-language reporting has introduced Tang mainly through Taiwan's response to COVID-19 and through digital public space.

Globes (October 2020). אופיר דור (Ofir Dor) of Globes interviewed Tang over Skype, and wrote that Tang sums up Taiwan's COVID-19 response in three words: "מהיר, הוגן ומהנה" (fast, fair and fun) [4].
The INSS conference (2021). At the Lipkin-Shahak conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), the deputy director איתי ברון (Itai Brun) and the researcher תומר שדמי (Tomer Shadmi) interviewed Tang. The institute's report summarizes that Taiwan sees national security and transparency not as competing but as complementary, and follows a policy of "ביטחון לאומי באמצעות שקיפות" (national security through transparency) [5].
The Seventh Eye (October 2021). In The Seventh Eye (העין השביעית), Shadmi wrote an essay based on this interview introducing Taiwan's participation mechanisms. It quotes Tang comparing Facebook to a "מועדון לילה" (nightclub), a place unsuited to public discussion [6].

Records of conversations between Tang and Israeli interviewers also remain. In a 2021 conversation with Neta Halperin, the interviewer remarked that the Taiwanese protest Tang took part in was very different from the protest in Israel [7].

Separately, in November 2020, in a conversation with Michael Tuchfeld, Tang was asked whether gaining people's cooperation requires first gaining their trust. Tang answered "No", and said that what matters is rather for the government to trust citizens and to make the state transparent to them. Tang also said that transparency, participation, accountability and inclusion "are all the state’s duties to the citizens" [8].

Reporting on Community Notes

Some Hebrew-language reporting on Community Notes deals with disinformation during the war between Israel and Hamas that began in 2023.

In October 2023, עומר כביר (Omer Kabir) of Calcalist introduced an investigation by the technology magazine Wired. According to the article, the Wired investigation reported that Community Notes was not helping to deal with disinformation during the war, and might even be making the problem worse [9].

According to TheMarker (January 2024), the Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL) examined the features of Community Notes, and published a report with guidance for Israeli users who want to fight disinformation [10].

Debates on rebuilding democracy

In a May 2026 interview with Calcalist, ליאב אורגד (Liav Orgad), an expert in constitutional and comparative law, put forward several proposals for improving democracy: liquid democracy (דמוקרטיה נוזלית), in which you can entrust your vote to a representative and take it back; algorithms that look for what people agree on; and voting that measures how strongly people want something [11]. → Liquid democracy

Orgad then gave, as an example of a movement led by civil society and the liberal parties, "להשתמש בפלטפורמות AI כדי להראות על מה 80% מהישראלים מסכימים 80% מהזמן" (using AI platforms to show what 80% of Israelis agree on 80% of the time). Orgad also mentioned the example of Taiwan, where after the 2014 protests, digital tools built by the protesters became official tools for policymaking. However, the article mentions neither Tang, nor Polis (a tool that maps the distribution of opinions), nor the book [11].

Civic tech that came earlier

Israel already has organizations for technology built by citizens (civic tech). According to Hebrew Wikipedia, הסדנא לידע ציבורי (Hasadna, the Public Knowledge Workshop) was founded in 2011. Before that, Open Knesset (2009), which makes the work of the parliament visible, and Open Budget (2010) had been launched [12].

Before the 2024 local elections, אדם קריב (Adam Kariv) of Hasadna's project "מפתח התקציב" (the Budget Key) launched a site that lets you compare your town with similar municipalities [13]. → Civic tech

However, the survey for this article found no source linking Hasadna to Taiwan's g0v or to Tang, and no example of Polis being used in Israel.

What is debated

Doubts about Community Notes. The Wired investigation introduced by Calcalist reported that the system is easy for outside groups to manipulate, and that there are internal struggles for control [9].
Views on ending fact-checking. Meanwhile, in January 2025, טל שחף (Tal Shahaf) of ynet discussed Meta's decision to end third-party fact-checking. Writing from the position that policing online posts is not a job for profit-making companies, Shahaf argued that ending it was long overdue. Shahaf also wrote, however, that the reasons for ending it now are not the right ones [14].
Protests and Plurality's tools. In the 2023 interview, the reporter did refer to protests in Israel [2]. But the survey for this article found no record of Polis or other Plurality tools being used in Israel's protests or around the divisions behind them.
The scope of the search. The catalog of the National Library of Israel could not be used, and publishers' catalogs and the site search of some newspapers and research institutes have not yet been checked. It cannot be said for certain that there is "no" Hebrew translation or discussion.

Where it fits in Plurality

What the Israeli sources discuss is mainly the practices the book introduces: Taiwan's vTaiwan, bridging (looking for agreement across differences of opinion), Community Notes and liquid democracy.

In these sources, the book's word "plurality" appears in only one place, in the 2023 interview. There Tang said that five years from now "this politics of building bridges, of what I call plurality, building collaboration across diversity" will become much more mainstream [2]. The only person who appears is Audrey Tang; the name of E. Glen Weyl was not found.

Articles on nearby language areas:

Sources

List of forks of the book's repository — https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality/forks ［CC0］
Interview with Yedioth Ahronoth (2023-06-28) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2023-06-28-Interview-with-Yedioth-Ahronoth.md ［CC0］
TheMarker, "ציוצים של נתניהו תויגו כשקרים, והערות הקהילה ב-X הפכו לזירת הקרב החדשה" (Netanyahu's tweets were labeled as lies, and Community Notes on X became the new battleground) (2024-12-25, in Hebrew) — https://www.themarker.com/captain-internet/2024-12-25/ty-article/.premium/00000193-fe1c-db47-a3d3-fe5e07bd0000
Globes, "שרת הדיגיטל של טיוואן מציגה: כך ניצחנו את הקורונה" (Taiwan's digital minister presents: this is how we beat the coronavirus) (2020-10-10, in Hebrew) — https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001344859
INSS, "אמון, אמת וביטחון לאומי: הקרב על התודעה בעידן הדיגיטלי - סיכום כנס ליפקין-שחק 2021" (Trust, truth and national security: the battle for consciousness in the digital age — summary of the 2021 Lipkin-Shahak conference) (2021-12-09, in Hebrew) — https://www.inss.org.il/he/publication/lipkin-shahak-annual-3/
The Seventh Eye, "המודל הדמוקרטי לטיפול בפייסבוק חי ובועט בטייוואן" (The democratic model for dealing with Facebook is alive and kicking in Taiwan) (2021-10-27, in Hebrew) — https://www.the7eye.org.il/433894
Interview with Neta Halperin (2021-09-30) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2021-09-30-Interview-with-Neta-Halperin.md ［CC0］
Interview with Michael Tuchfeld (2020-11-05) — https://github.com/audreyt/transcript/blob/main/2020-11-05-Interview-with-Michael-Tuchfeld.md ［CC0］
Calcalist, "תחקיר: הכלי המרכזי של X להתמודדות עם פייק ניוז – כושל" (Investigation: X's main tool for dealing with fake news is failing) (2023-10-24, in Hebrew) — https://www.calcalist.co.il/calcalistech/article/bkhlq7sma
TheMarker, "הערות הקהילה של טוויטר: הטוב, הרע ואיך לעשות את זה נכון" (Twitter's Community Notes: the good, the bad and how to do it right) (2024-01-24, in Hebrew) — https://www.themarker.com/captain-internet/2024-01-24/ty-article/0000018d-366e-dbf8-abdf-be7eccab0000
Calcalist, interview with Orgad (2026-05-07, in Hebrew) — https://www.calcalist.co.il/magazine/article/4hjygl7ma
Hebrew Wikipedia, "הסדנא לידע ציבורי" — https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%A1%D7%93%D7%A0%D7%90_%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%93%D7%A2_%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%91%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99 ［CC BY-SA 4.0］
Shakuf, "לפני הבחירות, לחצו וגלו: איך העיר שלכם בהשוואה לאחרות?" (Before the elections, click and find out: how does your city compare with others?) (2024-02-19, in Hebrew) — https://shakuf.co.il/47817
ynet, "מטא ויתרה על תפקיד השוטר וזה לאו דווקא רע" (Meta gave up the role of policeman, and that is not necessarily bad) (2025-01-08, in Hebrew) — https://www.ynet.co.il/digital/technews/article/h111ujmhiyl

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