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Facebook Launches 'Town Hall' For Contacting Government Reps, Adds Local Election Reminders (techcrunch.com)
Facebook has officially launched their "Town Hall" feature that allows users to locate, follow and contact their local, state and federal government representatives. The social media company also announced that they will be launching local election reminders in an effort to get more users to vote in state, county, and municipal elections. TechCrunch reports: The feature was recently made available in the "More" menu on mobile and on desktop to a subset of users. When you launch it, you would be presented with a list of reps at the local, state and federal level, and you could click to visit their Facebook page or send them a message, call them, or email. Not all reps offer their contact information via Facebook, however. And Facebook doesn't yet pull in the missing phone numbers or emails from off-site sources, like official government websites, for example. The company tell us that's something it wants to address in time, though. Today, Town Hall is available to all U.S. Facebook users and some of its features will now be integrated in the News Feed. If you like or comment on a post made by one of your elected officials, a new feature below the comments will invite you to call, message or email the rep. After doing so, users will then be prompted to share a post saying that they contacted the rep, as a means of encouraging their friends to do the same. Facebook says that this Contact Your Rep post is not shown to everyone, but only to those who are also already engaging with an elected official's post, through a like or comment. Additionally, Facebook says it will now offer Election Reminders for local elections. The new, local election reminders will appear for all state, county, and municipal elections in the U.S. in areas with a population of over 10,000 people, and will include both primaries and general elections.
What is that? It'd be useful to put that in the summary as not everyone on here is 80 years old.
As far as I can gather, it's a sort of social gathering online for bingo players?
I worry that facebook will use this to try to manipulate elections, by encouraging only people who are likely to vote for X party to vote. Or at least having the feature shown stronger to certain groups.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
More ways for them to ignore you.
Let's be honest - the argument against this is, "It's unfair, because telling people there's an election coming up will help the Democratic Party more than the Republican Party."
In an age when Republicans are hell-bent on making it difficult for Democratic voters to actually cast a ballot, by...
* Cutting voting hours on election day ...Facebook reminding people about local/city/state/national elections is a public service.
* Cutting early voting
* Shutting down poll booths in heavily Democrat areas e.g. Indian reservations
* Requiring voter ID in Democrat-leaning districts but not Republican-leaning districts
* Falsely telling ethnic minorities they need a photo ID to vote when there is no such requirement in the state
This is a very important and socially concious feature. I could see this feature being expanded in future towards direct frictionless voting. Anything that can increase the participation rate towards higher voter turnout and create more social discussion on political issues. Excellent work this is a great development
I just went there to check it out. In order to see anything beyond your Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Senators and President, you have to enter your home address. This is just an attempt by Facebook to get you to reveal this information. They use the same technique to try to get your phone number.
Sorry, Facebook, I don't want to give you that information. Instead, I should just be able to type in a zip code or state legislative district. But it doesn't work that way.
Nice try, Facebook, but no dice.
more than normal peoples. I want time off, but my company only lets illegals to get time off.
Contacting, and voting, should require an effort, but not a giant effort. Go to the state's website for a mailing address. Then, write the letter by hand, and send it the old fashioned way.
do you really think having fewer easily misled/dimwitted/single-issue voters participating in politics would make things worse?
Well if enough of them had come out to vote Hillary would have been president for starters. We'd be eating the last of the canned beans in the shelters about now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Facebook and Google already did that, trying to censor Republican concerns and promoting Hillary and the Progressive movement. I have zero faith that they will change their behavior, and believe they are part of the same leftist agenda as most media in the US.
I'll also add that today most young people are not taught about the US Constitution or History in general that does not favor progressivism. They are not trained in rhetoric, and not trained in the Socratic method. (You may be, but the generalization is correct that a large percentage is not). This means that they fall prey to propaganda much easier than someone older who has some ability to recognize and ignore the propaganda. The least educated among us are not necessarily the best people to vote. Those type of person vote one way, and it is never Conservative/Republican.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It is bad enough people use facebook, but making it an official channel for government/citizen contact.... Terrible, just terrible. Imagine Facebook snooping even deeper into the affairs of the citizenry. I would like to have FB outlawed as a media through which government was allowed to conduct any business. All government business should happen over extremely secure and non commercial channels and through open technologies
Cuz seriously.
This is absolutely fabulous! Yet another way for our unelected officials to totally ignore the electorate!
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Well, it had to come, didn't? Government as a Service.
they just have to offer good working conditions and pay their taxes, like everyone civilized does.
Until they take part in their responsibility I'll consider them as rogue parasites. The last thing I want from them is to mediate between me and politics (this goes for FB, Amazon, Google, Twitter and all those "extractive" enterprises).
I mean "new economy" and that is all good and well, and things gotta change, but this doesn't justify being a robber baron (the real villains still being the corrupt politicians, but someone gotta buy them in the end).
You know the half of people who don't use facebook, who are dwindling in terms of market-share.
Maybe they are trying to commoditize them again. The carrot: government that is actually responsive. It is a hallucination, a mirage, but better to die in a mirage than to die alone in the desert, right?
It almost makes me want to reconnect to my profile. I'm just too addicted to the extra 40 hours that not being on facebook adds to my life every week. I just love my kids knowing me, and being able to participate in their lives.
And when the government sends the tanks, what then? When America gets its own Tienanmen square moments for their generation, what then? The mirage will have powered the tanks. It will have put bullets in those guns.
I can't do it. I can't make myself do it. And that is probably a remarkably healthy think.
Wasn't there a big issue with how social media may or may not have influenced a recent election? My next question then would be whether this would help or hinder true neutrality. I fear it will only make it easier for those in control of a given social network to sway things their way.
If you point out facts that harm leftism, you can only be a troll. The left is the group attempting to silence and censor speech. Please continue to prove the point so that your ideology dies a horrific death.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Last year FB was caught red-handed censoring political news. They can no longer be trusted with political matters (or any news for that matter) and I have no intention of using any of their political features. What is to stop FB from disabling "town hall" notices from FB members affiliated with the political opposition? The liberals have gone too far in infiltrating news outlets, social media, "fact checkers", and other internet resources as well as rigging the elections. This chicanery must end.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
0. Promote political articles to your feed based on 'criteria'.
1. Censor or demote (or delete) political articles based on content and decisions (aka someone's ideology).
2. Offer a link to elected representatives to react based on promoted or censored articles, though not on deleted articles.
3. Profit!
What could be wrong with any of this?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Come now let's be serious increased voting hours are about hyper partisans being able to cast a ballot without making an informed decision. We had states letting people do early voting before the debates even took place!
Finally republicans demographically speaking don't have some major advantage when it comes to being able to go to polls between 6:30 and 8p on Election Day, quite possibly the opposit is true.
The simple answer is everyone with few exceptions should vote in person on Election Day which should also be a federal holiday. Anyone who is arguing for anything to far outside that is up to something
Or we'd have CNN claiming that Putin was hacking Democracy again.
Taking the standard "I can't believe [insert huge faceless corporation here] is spying on my yadda yadda yadda" out of the equation, like you suggest, I think anything to get people more involved in governance is not a bad thing.
Unless the same platform is feeding them a steady diet of fake news on top of everything else. Then it could be a Very Bad Thing(tm), for a functioning democracy at least. Not necessarily a bad thing for certain Billionaire factions who are currently leasing the presidency, or perhaps a new faction who will be taking over when the current group craters.
will find "issues" with the system.
Ironically Facebook gets more political the more it's owner gets involved in politics as well.
Too much "guiding" and "monitoring" to be reliable.
Elucidate, I'm interested in the downside...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.