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Facebook Wants You To Vote Tuesday
theodp (442580) writes "Six years in the making, Facebook's get-out-the-vote tool — a high-profile button that proclaims "I'm Voting" or "I'm a Voter" — will on Tuesday give many of the social network's more than 150 million American users a gentle but effective nudge to vote. "If past research is any guide," writes Micah L. Sifry in Mother Jones, "up to a few million more people will head to the polls partly because their Facebook friends encouraged them. Yet the process by which Facebook has developed this tool — what the firm calls the 'voter megaphone' — has not been very transparent, raising questions about its use and Facebook's ability to influence elections. Moreover, while Facebook has been developing and promoting this tool, it has also been quietly conducting experiments on how the company's actions can affect the voting behavior of its users." Sifry adds, "There may be another reason for Facebook's lack of transparency regarding its voting promotion experiments: politics. Facebook officials likely do not want Republicans on Capitol Hill to realize that their voter megaphone isn't a neutral get-out-the-vote mechanism. It's not that Facebook uses this tool to remind only users who identify themselves as Democrats to vote — though the company certainly has the technical means to do so. But the Facebook user base tilts Democratic." So, it's probably worth mentioning again that Facebook caught flack last summer for deliberately experimenting on users' emotions without their consent. And just last June, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC put out a call for "pissed off Data Scientists" to data mine critical legislative districts and "growth hack" ways to motivate "registered voters who are registered Republicans who we think are likely to support immigration reform.""
Back when if you wanted to talk to your friends online you would just talk to your friends online, instead of talking to Facebook and having Facebook pass it on?
Well guess what. The more you put a single third party in the middle of everything, the more room there is for them to abuse that.
This is what all you Facebook users asked for. It'll get worse yet. This is only the beginning. Eventually you won't get to KNOW when they are using the power you gave them.
Since Facebook's users lean Democrat, more of them voting will mean a shift towards Democratic politicians. I bet the Republicans will be pissed.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
People who only vote because they heard about it on Facebook (or via that stupid sticker people wear) shouldn't be voting.
My circle of FB friends have been circulating dozens of GOTV images for the last month. My favorite has been a picture of a silly looking Tea Party guy in full regalia holding up an anti-government sign, with the caption: "This guy is voting. Are you?" (There are other more mean spirited ones that are kind of classist, showing rednecks, which I declined to share.)
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Facebook wants to import an army of people from other countries to bid down tech salaries. That's why they want your vote.
Yeah, maybe this might have been interesting news six or seven years ago. Now Facebook has pretty much become synonymous with "please take my privacy away, take all my personal information, all my pictures and status updates, store them forever and use them for marketing purposes." Well that and "sell the info to whatever government waves the biggest pile of money our way."
Kind of like the whole Facebook TOR service joke, at least I can only assume it's a joke because it's hard to believe an entire company could miss the fucking point that badly. "Now you can obscure your original location! Sure, our phone and tablet apps will still scour free every last bit of personal information on you we can get our money-grubbing hands on, but at least now you can pretend you're visiting from somewhere else!"
Fuck Facebook.
Or Wednesday will win? /.?
Why is this on article on
Interview with Rayid Ghani, Chief Scientist Obama 2012 Campaign: Q. How did you use facebook and other social networks as part of modeling? A. We used facebook for a few different purposes: We used facebook to reach young voters who were hard to reach using traditional channels such as phone, direct mail, and door-to-door canvassing. We built models using data from users who authorized our facebook app that allowed us to ask our supporters to contact their friends for specific reasons (voter registration, volunteering, going to vote, etc.). Our hypothesis was that getting their friends to ask them was more effective than us asking them directly by broadcasting on our facebook page. We also used facebook to determine people's interest and send them messages that were relevant to them and hence increase their likelihood of taking action.
Yes but the world tilts Democratic, and Facebook is pretty much the world minus super old people, so color me unsurprised.
Back in 2011 we had a vote in the UK as to whether we would switch our voting system from "first past the post" to "alternative vote".
Although my Facebook feed was absolutely riddled with people proclaiming their support for AV and no-one for FPTP (and a quick straw poll of my work colleagues suggested the same for them) that wasn't reflected in the results which were that 68 per cent voted No (to AV) and 32 per cent voted Yes.
Facebook may have influenced some people to go out and vote, but it certainly didn't seem to reflect how the country voted as a whole.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Republicans are hardly anti-H1B: GOP Leaders Clamoring for More High Tech Immigration if Party Wins Back Senate
Until candidates that are not already wholly owned/corrupt are presented as an option, I see no point in voting.. ie: not a member of the established parties.
Perhaps make it legal to 'write in' a canidate, tho if that were the case media personalities would likely get it, tho never know..
Not that I think massive social networking is even remotely a 'good thing' , but perhaps a 'nominate for ....' button on everyones page; and then facebook itself would do the paperwork and nominate those with the most votes ;) Gotta get new uncorrupted people in somehow, even if they are fools(they can't possibly do worse?)
When the party who wants your vote can't get it with what their plans are, they have to scare you to get your vote. If you are not informed enough on the issues and it takes a picture like that to get someone to vote... it would be better for them not to vote. You end up with people who support stuff like Obamacare that is presented nice, but everyone informed knew it was surrounded in lies and already is failing.
Maybe I am weird, but I don't care if my friends vote, and I don't care to tell others I voted. Maybe if face book lists what the candidates stand for (depending on state) without a bias to either side. For whatever reason, the media is totally backing Democrats even when they have to know they would pass things that hurt the people of this country.
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Facebook is in the business of cataloging people so that those people can be sold to whoever wants to pay Facebook for the goods.
If you click on that button, you'll be added to the collection of people that Facebook can sell to politicians and their PACs.
On the H1B issue, I work in the tech industry and the way I see it is that I'd rather compete against a guy sitting a few cubes down in my office, who's making at least 60 percent of my salary, than against people with college degrees in some developing country who are being paid the US minimum wage or less.
The way I see it, immigration of tech workers from Asia and other parts of the world is actually a net positive for the US and our future prospects for employment, particularly compared with countries that take a more protective stance for their homegrown workforce. It makes us more dynamic and more attractive for both large and small countries. You may have noticed that IBM and other companies (even Wipro) have drastically scaled back employment in India.
As for preventing or slowing down large-scale technology and knowledge transfer to the rest of the world, that ship has sailed. We've got to compete against everybody now, with our advantages and disadvantages. It's yet another struggle against the forces of nature. There will always be new monopolists to take Microsoft's place, there will always be dramatic platform shifts in technology that render large chunks of our knowledge base obsolete overnight, often from clever startups that we're not personally invested in. Fine, bring it on.
Ignore the democrats AND republicans, and try to actually clean the house. Otherwise... more NSA, CIA, DEA, IRS, FCC, more Comcast, more Time Warner, more Koch/Soros, and more Americans dying in war for profit.... Is that what all of you want?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I'm not voting because the system is rigged and the choice between OldWhiteguy#1 and OldWhiteguy#2 that pretty much agree on everything isn't really a choice at all so I refuse to participate. So where's my button?
This just in: no voting drive EVER in the history of the universe has been neutral and unbiased.
I've been a Facebook user since nearly the beginning and my political beliefs trend towards conservative views which Facebook could easily tell and I don't recall even one gentle reminder from Facebook to get out and vote. Hmmm, more dishonest political shenanigans from people with leftist ideals?
Until candidates that are not already wholly owned/corrupt are presented as an option, I see no point in voting.. ie: not a member of the established parties.
If 33% votes for established party A, 33% votes for established party B while 33% doesn't vote - either party only needs the votes of the remaining 1%.
And so it will cater to the needs of 1%.
Which 1%? The easy 1%.
Which one is easy? The exaggerated, extreme, easily amused, swayable 1%.
Also, 33% A vs. 33% B means that the votes of their sympathizers have inflated value.
Non-voters, by giving up their right to vote, are turning that 33% into 50% of electorate.
Making not voting not just a vote for status quo and established parties, but also making every vote for established parties 1.5 times more valuable than the vote for any other option.
Based on the average intelligence of facebook users, i'd say they're more geared towards being republican...
Facebook is filled with dumb as fuck..
The rollout of holocaust 2.0 will use Facebook to roundup political opponents, dissidents and the like.
"Six years in the making....a high-profile button that proclaims "I'm Voting" or "I'm a Voter".....deliberately experimenting on users' emotions without their consent"
that's no button...
f/b is rolling out a perception control system, with it's own "dashboard", basically to manipulate users and sell their data
Thank you Dave Raggett
While, quite frankly, I'd actually prefer that stupid people not over-tax their brains trying to pick candidates and issues that they think somehow benefit them, they've got every right to do so and shouldn't be actively discouraged from it, HOWEVER, uniformed "sheep" voters are arguably the absolute worst threat to democracy that exists in America today. Basically, their votes are for sale to the highest bidder. Convince them that "the man" is keeping them down and tell them who the man is and they'll vote against him/her/it. Convince them that so-and-so is like them and will stand up for their rights and they'll vote so-and-so every time. Left unchecked, the combination of uninformed voters and unlimited political contributions will be the downfall of free societies.
On a side note, what the hell kind of country allows people to vote without verifying they're eligible to do so and are who they claim to be? I don't know what kind of warped logic that comes from, but it's so stupid that other countries are (literally, I've seen in firsthand) laughing at us. If the problem is that somehow minorities and poor people "can't afford" to get and carry a picture ID, fix THAT problem, not some almost entirely unrelated symptom. Or better yet, work on fixing the even more fundamental problem of poverty rather than whining about how this and that specific thing are somehow "not fair" to poor people...
the policies of Democrats and Republicans are very, very different.
if you so dumb as to think that there is no difference between what Democrats and what Republicans do, by policy, then you're an idiot and should not be allowed to vote
Thank you Dave Raggett
basically, if you vote for any non-Democrat, you are helping Republicans
this false dichotomy talk is foolish and inaccurate
just look at Net Neutrality, among many, many examples...
Democrats are the only people in government promoting Net Neutrality
look at *any* policy issue and the Democrats are orders of magnitude more rational than Republicans
Thank you Dave Raggett
false dichotomy
Republican policies are VERY different from Democrat policies
Look at *any issue*...Net Neutrality, civil liberties, jobs, economic policy, foreign policy...Democratic policy positions are demonstrably different and *better*
another example?
Global Warming...
GOP'ers still deny pollution harms the environmnet
Thank you Dave Raggett
yes, thank you
there is evidence of what you describe: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/12/...
you could watch Romney's "likes" go down by the second there for awhile
Thank you Dave Raggett
For software development they can outsource it to another country which would make no big difference to having all those foreigners move to the USA. For administration the labor cost is already low.
"raising questions about its use and Facebook's ability to influence elections"
And how is Facebook influencing elections by reminding users to vote? Are they also telling them who to vote FOR?
The campaign money Zuckerberg and fellow evil 1%ers does more to influence election results....
facebook donates to GOP causes...and as stated in the description, Zuck's FWD.us is actively lobbying to undercut American workers
the idea that this system will "help democrats" is ridiculous...it's made specifically to influence votes...
this is a product launch, and the product is a perception control system that you can pay to use
Thank you Dave Raggett
Personally I'd rather they lobby the voters than the politicians, you might say that people being gullible and easy manipulated is a flaw but at least that's democracy as designed. When politicians get paid lots of campaign contributions to buy votes while voting in favor of the corporations funding them rather than the votes electing them that's circumventing the democratic process. Not to mention that I think most voters vote for what they want to believe, facts be damned.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
they call it connected, all they do is make the world smaller and smaller
Right. They don't really care about democracy, they just want to know how you vote, when and if you vote, so that they can sell that information in advance of you voting in order to render your vote less meaningful on election day. Your "vote" is sold as poling data before the vote is ever cast....this will make hanging chads or voting privacy irrelevant. F*ck Facebook, f*cking f*ckfaced f*ckers.
had nothing to do with that, but thanks for trying
I'm voting for the fucking massive wall of text party.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The rich have lawyers and accountants to find loopholes to keep them from paying more no matter how many taxes are raised by liberal democrats. They know that ultimately it is the middle class that suffers under more taxes and the poor get poorer as opportunities dry up but rich people like Zuckerberg do not care.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Well, let's see. Who gave us the EPA and OSHA? And with whose help were American schools desegregated and civil rights legislation passed? Oh yeah... A bunch of damn republicans! Conversely who was firing all those water cannons at the protesters? Who started our little adventure in Southeast Asia? Who created the CIA and NSA and federal reserve and made marijuana illegal? Who is giving more money to the Wall Street Gambling Association? Who was Noah's wife? Where is Jimmy Hoffa? Life is too short to list all the ways you couldn't be more wrong. You better read some history before projecting your own "intellectual" proclivities onto others there, sonny. And I hope you are grateful that 98% of the voters (and Slashdot moderators) think just like you. I hear it really does wonders for the ol' self esteem.
-f
apologies for second reply
Why is that, exactly? How is it "dumb" to tell people they shouldn't vote if they have no idea what the hell is going on or who the hell the guy they're voting for is? Or even worse, in California, what the hell a particular proposition is about?
End result is, you get crappy laws and crappy people running the show because a bunch of ignorant people voted based on the -R or -D, and we'll be stuck in the R-D rut forever. I'm sure the parties aren't complaining about that, though. Ignorant people are more loyal voters.
Full disclosure: I'm not voting this season because I haven't been paying attention. I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm not going to vote just for the sake of voting, and end up helping put some assclown into office. I wish more people would do that too.
Propaganda is a human problem. Smart people are equally vulnerable to it. They just require different tactics of persuasion. Appeals to scientific authority usually do wonders in their case. Similarly: us "trolls" don't notice a huge difference in immunity to provocation along lines of intelligence.
Why is it expected that those who don't have the motivation to vote without being prompted would be good contributors to the process? The very same people are likely to be less concerned with the outcome and to have spent no time deliberating over the platforms of the parties and candidates. There is no ethical justification for the sort of "get out the vote" program being discussed, only a strategic one--and that goes against the spirit of democracy.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Will be targeted by the appropriate party functionaries in the next election, since FB will be selling their PI to the various parties and campaigns. This is a *huge* money making opportunity for FB.
Consider how FB makes money. Consider what political affiliation information can be gleaned from someone's FB history. Consider how difficult it is for political parties and campaigns to track down those who might support them, either with votes or money.
This year (an off year), over USD$4 Billion has been spent on political campaigns. This will likely be much, much more in 2016 (in 2012, USD$7 Billion was spent on political campaigns). FB wants their piece of the pie.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
what the fuck, just type 'FUCKING FUCKFACED FUCKERS'.. don't be a pantywaist about it.
Please provide the link to the report with evidence of non-citizens voting. I think everyone would like to see the numbers for themselves. Thanks.
The democrats are running scared and they want to do anything they can to keep republican and independents from voting for the Republicans because they know that the useful idiots who always vote for the Democrats will show up for their party no matter what the democrats have done wrong.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Vote is important. If you American people manage to get a democrat president elected, then Guantanamo prison could be closed.
Oh, wait...
what the fuck, just type 'FUCKING FUCKFACED FUCKERS'.. don't be a pantywaist about it.
I apologize, I was pansy coating my fucks.
Sorry, but sometimes Facebook makes my penis fall off.
With reports of Google being able to sway undecided voters by tweaking the search results in favor/against electoral candidates, and now Facebook having the ability to selectively influence people to vote, how long really before we're living in a world run only for profit. That's if we aren't already doing so.
If you vote, you're buying in to this corrupt system and you continue to elect reeking sacks of shit as our so-called leaders and you have lost you right to complain out it!!!
The fewer that care about Democrazy , the better. Like they say, tyranny by the minority. Next to Communism and Anarchy, the biggest FAIL. It's horrible that we encourage other less developed nations to subject their people to it.
Besides, in the end, the majority will end up voting for the one-party Repubmocrats to continue business-as-usual; dissembling and selling out the union of the several states while claiming : "the King does indeed wear clothes", " turn off, tune out, drop in", "we're the only solution for serious consideration", "Only WE can protect you from the dangers that WE tell you are dangerous" and the good old "America, land of the free and home of the brave, thanks to Democrazy" (frankly, life showed more promise and the BETTER potential for actual progress as the Republic we were in the early 1900s.
What a bunch of suckers!
Obama sat on the curb with a jar full of rabbit shit, just whistling a happy tune.
Along came his friends, the people of the several states. "Hey, Obama, what do you have there, in that jar?
Obama smiles slyly and says " they're smart pills.Want one?
So he distributes a "pill" to everyone, calling it Obamacare.
Chewing the pill with a look of disgust on their faces, the people of the U.S. say"Hey! These pills taste like shit!"
Obama screws the lid back on the jar and says" looks like you're getting smarter already".
So, Mr. J.Q. Public, did the pills work? Will you be voting Repubmocrat this time? Want another smart pill? The last one didn't get the job done, I predict you will end up eating a lot of shit before things get better.
The rollout of holocaust 2.0 will use Facebook to roundup political opponents, dissidents and the like."
Sadly, all too likely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
"IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation is a book by investigative journalist Edwin Black which details the business dealings of the American-based multinational corporation International Business Machines (IBM) and its German and other European subsidiaries with the government of Adolf Hitler during the 1930s and the years of World War II. In the book Black outlines the way in which IBM's technology helped facilitate Nazi genocide through generation and tabulation of punch cards based upon national census data.[1]"
Thus I wrote, in the true spirit of "never forget":
http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...
"Now, there are many people out there (including computer scientists) who may raise legitimate concerns about privacy or other important issues in regards to any system that can support the intelligence community (as well as civilian needs). As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for some healthy mix of a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, improved local subsistence, etc., all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM [punched card equipment] in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
So long as Citizen United stands, progressive companies and activist billionaires should take full advantage of it. Currently we allow voters to only hear from fossil fuel companies and military-industrial complex. Imagine their sites and ads suddenly disappearing from search results and news feeds, replaced by other candidates and educational messages about global warming. Let them find out how many people are still watching Comcast TV and highway billboards. Better, put a prominent link to explanation of Citizens United and videos of republicans defending it next to each ad. Let conservative voters get outraged for a right reason for a change.
We had early voting here in Looziana a couple of weeks ago. I went on the first day.
"A Bird In The Hand Will Poop On Your Wrist"-Benny Hill,1982