[HN Gopher] FEC Asks Congress to Ban Prechecked Recurring Donati...
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FEC Asks Congress to Ban Prechecked Recurring Donation Boxes
Author : geox
Score : 165 points
Date : 2021-08-08 13:40 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| Perhaps banning recurring donations is the better idea*?.
|
| I can sit here for five minutes and think up several ways to
| achieve the exact same thing some arbitrary UI element
| (prechecked checkbox) achieves. Don't even need a checkbox. Just
| change the terms.
|
| *Ooops. Forgot Citizens United. Poop!*
| rtkwe wrote:
| Can we not pretend that laws have to use the most surface level
| definition of things? It's a silly straw man attack and isn't
| how laws are (usually) written.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I don't think banning recurring donations would breach citizens
| United, but I'm not a lawyer.
|
| To my understanding, Citizens United controls what you can do
| with your money. It does not cover what arrangements campaigns
| can have to _charge_ you money. You can set a reminder to
| donate monthly if you want, but that doesn't mean that PACs can
| necessarily charge you monthly, in my opinion.
|
| Similarly, the courts have held that the FEC can't control what
| candidates say, which is good. But the FEC can force political
| adverts to make it clear who paid for it, which is also good.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| CU has nothing to so with donation rules for campaign
| committees; like _Buckley v. Valeo_ before it, it deals with
| _independent_ expenditures by entities which are not and do not
| coordinate with campaign committees.
| tenfourwookie wrote:
| Too wonk. Please simplify.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Too wonk. Please simplify.
|
| Buckley v. Valeo: "you can spend your own money without
| limit on political ads, if you aren't coordinating with a
| campaign".
|
| Citizens United: "...and that includes if 'you' are a
| corporation, not an individual."
|
| Neither restricts the ability of the federal government to
| restrict spending by or coordinated with campaigns, or
| donations to campaigns.
| mrfusion wrote:
| I can't figure out if this benefits my political team so I'm not
| sure if it support it. But once I find out I'll rapidly defend or
| oppose it. /s
| [deleted]
| mattnewton wrote:
| I know you are being sarcastic; but I think this probably
| affects all political teams who otherwise would be giving up a
| significant advantage by not at least hiring some firm at arms
| length to try to fleece their supporters this way. I think it's
| even better for everyone to ban it so that everyone doesn't get
| trapped in this race to the bottom.
| peter422 wrote:
| DJT's campaign made heavy use of this tactic but AFAIK no
| other major political candidate has done this. Unsurprisingly
| DJT's donations had much higher chargeback rates.
|
| Most politicians don't want to anger their biggest
| supporters. DJT didn't seem to care.
| Spivak wrote:
| You joke but this is a real problem that prevents us from
| clearing out our political tech debt so to speak. If you expect
| worse outcomes from the loss of political territory than the
| harm from whatever you want to change then it doesn't happen.
| And you have to constantly deal with both sides trying to
| change things that they know in advance disproportionately
| affect their opponents.
|
| Until our political system "stabilizes" where high-profile
| elections aren't won by teeny tiny margins or determined by
| turnout and voting access more than the real preferences of the
| population this is going to be an issue.
| zibzab wrote:
| EU guy here, curious how this is received in US.
|
| Can someone who donated to Trumps after-election campaign tell me
| what he/she feels about this? Partisan shenanigans or a generally
| good idea?
| meepmorp wrote:
| This is just a politics-oriented variant of a "growth hack."
| It's not about the ideology, it's about roping people into
| giving them money they didn't really intended to spend, with
| what is basically adding a subscription service they hope you
| don't notice.
|
| Yes, ban it to death.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding how bad the general state of
| political fundraising in the US is. Just over the past week,
| I've gotten:
|
| * An email titled "watch our video [not asking for money]"
| which links to a request for money
|
| * _two_ people - one from each side of the aisle - trying to
| gaslight me into donating "again" since I've purportedly
| already joined their campaign
|
| * a fake survey where every prompt is some variation on "Did
| you know how vile those guys are?" and the only response
| options are "Yes, they suck" or "No, but I know now".
|
| * an email written to sound like a personal letter, assuring me
| that some state legislators will be unjustly imprisoned if I
| don't sign a petition, but reveals upon clicking into the
| petition that they also need to collect $2,084 by midnight. (I
| only personally need to send $16 - it's "today's most popular
| amount!")
|
| And I've only ever made a single political donation from my
| current email! I don't think it's partisan at all to say the
| status quo isn't okay here.
| wiseleo wrote:
| Let's not forget "official poll" emails that aren't. I have
| no way of knowing if I am being polled or solicited. Hence,
| my voice is now excluded from political polls.
| syshum wrote:
| I dont donate to PAC's or campaigns..
|
| However I have a problem with pretty much all FEC regulations
| because I am a free speech absolutist, and I view these
| "campaign finance laws" at minimum to be a spiritual
| infringement on the principle of free expression even if they
| pass legal challenges.
|
| They also rares accomplish their stated goals and often end up
| being an advantage to the incumbents in power who have access
| to more "free media" as part of their official duties...
| bluejekyll wrote:
| Both parties do it. IMO this should absolutely be banned. Also
| the donation checkboxes are not always clear as to if they are
| enabled or disabled.
|
| This is definitely a non-partisan issue of politicians straight
| up trying to trick people into donating more than they intend.
| [deleted]
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think the 1-click donations should also be banned. I recall
| getting a solicitation from one of the two major parties with
| a "click here to support Foo" button in the email.
|
| Fine print at the bottom revealed that if you had a payment
| method on file that click would, without further action,
| donate some set amount to candidate Foo. (I don't recall the
| details of the amount.)
|
| I'm fine with fundraising, but "click here to support" I
| expect to land me on a web page where I could read more and
| make a fully informed decision to donate, not to take money
| out of my account from the email click.
| meepmorp wrote:
| That's incredibly shady. I bet I've made an informed choice
| to donate to a candidate or two because I've fat fingered a
| link while reading email on my phone.
| alyandon wrote:
| If you want a real eye opening experience (or just have a morbid
| curiosity) - sign up for Democratic/Republican donation lists via
| a throw away email address and read the material you get sent by
| PACs begging for donations. It's disgustingly manipulative what
| these organizations do.
| JamilD wrote:
| Relevant article; it focuses on one candidate but the
| techniques are often universal (albeit at different
| magnitudes):
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donatio...
| rtpg wrote:
| What pisses me off the most is that basically none of the dem
| lists do anything but ask for money. No calls to action/call
| your senator/etc. Just people trying to get paid.
|
| (Contrast to Sanders, who, especially as the pandemic started,
| often guided people to give money to other causes. But even for
| his list I feel like there was an opportunity for coordinated
| action on many things that was lost)
|
| What's the point of coordinated channels of supporters if it's
| just to get money? I'm not that interested in subsidizing
| consulting firms and adtech thank you
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I would guess it's the other way around, and lists that are
| just trying to rake in cash are much more likely to get your
| email because they're more willing to use shady acquisition
| tactics.
| healsdata wrote:
| I just searched my gmail for "democrat" and the 2 of the 5
| most recent emails had calls to action in them and 4 were
| asking for donations. This includes the most recent email I
| have from Joe Biden which had both.
|
| All of my elected officials have an official mailing list for
| constituents which separates out their calls to action on
| government matters from their fundraising, campaigning, etc.
| This includes Brian Fitzpatrick, who is a Republican. I
| prefer it that way so I can unsubscribe from donation
| requests and still get the other.
|
| Seems like you signed up for fundraising mailing lists and
| then were surprised they were focused on fundraising. Try
| signing up for the other lists.
| kfprt wrote:
| Better yet, if you absolutely want to force someone to abandon
| their email you can sign them up with donations. Political
| campaigners are the best harassment money can buy.
| meepmorp wrote:
| Yep. It's great that whoever in New Anystate's 13th
| congressional district is taking on Big Whatever, but I have no
| connection to the person, place, or issue. You may not have
| money and please go away.
| kaffee wrote:
| It's not well known that the (US) CAN-SPAM act does not apply
| to political and religious organizations. They can spam as much
| as they want.
|
| First amendment law is full of surprises.
| kfprt wrote:
| It's practically the only issue they care about.
|
| "Republican congressman Greg Steube asks Google CEO why his
| campaign emails are going to spam"
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/jul/29/republi.
| ..
| User23 wrote:
| > Pichai said "there is nothing in the algorithm that has
| to do with political ideology"
|
| That's an interesting non-denial: he never actually says
| the spam algorithm isn't biased against conservatives.
| There could well be a bias, because many ML systems have
| unintended biases. Google could easily answer the question.
| It'd probably take an hour max to write and run the
| mapreduce or whatever they use now.
| Retric wrote:
| The algorithm wouldn't have a bias vs conservatives
| because it doesn't include semantic meaning, but it could
| have a bias vs methods used by this conservative. Which
| really just comes down on whoever is generating those
| emails.
| klyrs wrote:
| I don't know if it does or doesn't, but Republicans and
| Democrats use different keywords, not just semantics. For
| example, 'law and order', 'police reform', etc. It's
| certainly possible for ML to pick up a bias in the
| presence of such differences.
| Retric wrote:
| They also quote each other, without context it's just
| word choice not the message. Considering messages are
| already tailored to different kinds of voters, spam
| algorithms are just another part of messaging.
| kfprt wrote:
| Politicians of both parties often use the same middlemen.
| The 'campaigning industry' isn't so much red or blue but
| green.
| therealcamino wrote:
| What organizations are you thinking of? I'm not an expert
| in the area, and ones I know of are ActBlue that works
| only with Democrats, and WinRed which is the Republican
| clone.
| Retric wrote:
| Often true, but this was a specific case and there are a
| lot of red or blue focused middlemen.
| syshum wrote:
| What I find ironic about google's position is they
| believe implicit unconscious bias permeates all of
| society, except when it comes to their programmers who
| are clearly majority democrat....
|
| It should not be ironic, because Google has a history of
| seeing itself above any flaws, and as the Arbiter of
| Truth
| nicoburns wrote:
| I'd be very surprised if democratic party emails don't
| also frequently get marked as spam. I somehow ended up on
| their list despite not even living in the US, and it was
| a complete nightmare to get off of it because the
| unsubscribe link only worked for a specific campaign.
| I've marked hundreds of their emails as spam by now, and
| it's entirely their own fault.
| QuadmasterXLII wrote:
| It's probably just detecting and deleting capslock
| pwg wrote:
| > It's not well known that the (US) CAN-SPAM act does not
| apply to political and religious organizations.
|
| This is because the politicians in office at the time of
| writing the "CAN-SPAM" act explicitly wrote in their own
| exemption for themselves for campaigning purposes. As to why
| religious orgs. also got included, I don't remember -- one
| wonders if it was simply to obscure the blatant "we are
| making ourselves above this law" look for exempting
| themselves from the law.
|
| They (the politicians that time) did the same thing with the
| "Do Not Call" phone number list, politicians wrote in their
| own exemption for themselves for campaigning purposes, and
| then added an exemption for charity orgs. to the law as well.
| atlgator wrote:
| Emphasis on "Prechecked" here. This isn't a ban on recurring
| donations. They just can't be turned on by default.
| h2odragon wrote:
| Professional political fundraising is a thing. It's an industry.
| They sell their services to issue oriented NGO's, too.
|
| As far as I know (2 decades ago i had some contact with that
| world) they're _all that slimy_. "dark patterns" like this are
| the least of it, they fake addresses, steal data from customers,
| fiddle accounting, etc etc. "It's not a crime until you've been
| caught."
| Spivak wrote:
| The positions are called DevOps if you want to poke around at
| some job descriptions of the people who do this for a living.
| Outside of the egregious examples that get spread around (and
| if you're not politically active might be the only ones you
| know so keep that in mind) it's a pretty boring job. Clicking
| around Salesforce, lots of mailmerges, event planning,
| reporting, and the financial logistics of people with
| conditions on their money or people who donate through
| foundations or donor advised funds.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Credit/digital payments as a whole are backwards. Currently, you
| give your payment information to some organization, and they can
| bill you whatever they want and you hope they don't take your
| money indefinitely. If someone takes your money and you try to
| get it back, your own credit is on the line when you try to
| resolve it. Even with chargebacks, your credit card company may
| only accept so many.
|
| Instead it should be client-controlled, they give you some sort
| of payment token that you can pay or not pay. For recurring
| payments, you could trust a particular vendor you like (and then
| untrust them at will), but it should entirely be under your
| control. Unsubscription should be automatically handled by this
| as well.
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(page generated 2021-08-08 23:01 UTC)