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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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
"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
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
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.
An excellent point. It is the duty of citizens to vote their consciences. Since those who are elected are making decisions for us, we, as an electorate, need to educate ourselves in order to identify the right criminal^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H candidate for a given elective office. Unlimited political contributions fly in the face of this. It's rather depressing.
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...
I don't know about where you live, but where I live there is most certainly a verification process. I must sign the election district register where there is *already* a sample of my signature. If they don't match, then it's not me. I won't be allowed to vote again either, since my signature is already recorded. That's plenty of verification for me.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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
I'm voting for the fucking massive wall of text party.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you mean the police you're probably correct.
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.
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.
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.
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