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.""

Comments

Lucky for Democrats

[penguinoid]

Since Facebook's users lean Democrat, more of them voting will mean a shift towards Democratic politicians. I bet the Republicans will be pissed.

Re:Lucky for Democrats

[aristotle-dude]

Rich democrats are out to destroy the middle class and make the working class too poor to fight back when they decide to take away all of your rights from you.

Re:Lucky for Democrats

[penguinoid]

I thought both parties were out to destroy the middle class. The difference, of course, is that Republicans want to screw to poor to help the rich, while pretending they will help the poor due to trickle down economics. Conversely, the Democrats want to appear to help the poor while sabotaging their situation is less obvious ways, such as illegal immigrants and H-1B visas to drop wages, passing large taxes (with equally large loopholes) on the rich, and aid programs that will help you while you are poor but will cease if you start improving your situation.

Re:remember the old days?

[penguinoid]

Facebook isn't abusing their user base in this case -- at least, you'd have a hard time convincing me that encouraging your demographic to vote is some sort of abuse.