Mostly Theater? Taking Aim At White House 'We the People' Petitions

theodp writes: "Since we launched We the People in 2011," wrote the White House last month, "millions of Americans have engaged with their government on the issues that matter to them. This groundbreaking online platform has made petitioning the government, a First Amendment right, more accessible than ever. Over the past few years, the Obama administration has taken a stance on a number of causes that citizens really care about and used the We the People petition platform to voice their concerns." Sounds good, but even if the White House is listening to We the People petitions, as it assured skeptics, one wonders what — and who — exactly they are listening to. Petitions suffer from being aye-only, lack identity and location verification, and appear to have other data quality issues. One attempting to explore the petition data for the 67,022-and-counting signers of a new petition urging a quick response to a court decision that could cut the time international STEM students can work in the U.S. on student visas after graduation, for example, would be stymied by thousands of missing and non-U.S. postal codes. Plotting what location info is available does show that the petitioners are clustered around tech and university hubs, hardly a surprise, but it sheds no context on whether these represent corporate, university, and/or international student interests.

Comments

Re:Same story, different book.

[gurps_npc]

It takes no further reading at all to realize:

1) You are off topic.

2) You are being a troll - pushing your personal political view into a topic that has nothing to do with it.

3) This is exactly the kind of thing Putin pays people to do to his political enemies, as admitted by the Russian courts.

So no, we are not going listen to some dickish troll about what we should read before moderating you down.