[HN Gopher] Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text
___________________________________________________________________
Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text
Author : ajs256
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-02-06 17:04 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resist.bot)
(TXT) w3m dump (resist.bot)
| crackercrews wrote:
| I would consider using this but don't trust their privacy policy.
| People have been canned for expressing political opinions or
| donating to political causes.
|
| How do I know this company won't leak my information? This is
| especially a concern for people they would not consider political
| allies. Is there a more anon way to use it than giving your phone
| number?
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| > Resistbot is the smartest technology to emerge from the
| disaster that was the 2016 election
|
| Your preferred candidate losing is a "disaster"?
| hwers wrote:
| Makes me wonder if this can be trusted to actually work to
| amplify all sides of the political compass. GoFundMe's recent
| example comes to mind as techs untrustworthiness to not meddle
| with things in the direction of the CEOs preferred political
| stance.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Given that candidate lost the popular vote by the greatest
| margin in history yet still "won" the election, ended his
| presidency with the lowest popularity rating in history, was
| the least emotionally and intellectually capable president
| we've probably ever had, systematically destroyed everything he
| could touch in the federal government (including a public
| health surveillance and assistance system that could have
| helped detect covid far earlier), literally withheld supplies
| from states he lost in the prior election, spent more time on
| vacation than any of his modern predecessors, and responded to
| losing the election by encouraging violent public insurrection
| and engaging in numerous conspiracies to subvert the election
| certification process by fraud...yes?
|
| That said, I don't see how this text widget is going to do
| anything.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The two most hated candidates in history. The Republican
| Party fought tooth and nail to prevent Trump from being their
| candidate, but had accidentally reformed their primary
| process in negotiations with the Tea Party so much that their
| voters actually had the final say (the same thing happened
| under Milliband in the UK which later resulted in Corbyn
| winning Labour leadership.) The Democratic Party, by
| contrast, fought tooth and nail to attack every candidate
| except Clinton, despite how hated she was.
|
| 2016 was an own goal.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| "When a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure."
|
| Tools like this just make _all_ modes of contacting officials
| less effective. Zeynep handled this really clearly years ago:
| https://www.twitterandteargas.org/
| hwers wrote:
| I wonder how often these things actually work. At this point
| officials must get so many texts that they can't possibly be
| reading them and they know they're highly liable to be automated
| rather than necessarily representing real actors.
| showerst wrote:
| They're not reading every constituent message, many reps get
| thousands of messages a day. But they're seeing aggregated
| reports.
|
| If a rep suddenly starts getting a thousand messages a day all
| supporting/opposing issue X, that's going to get noticed.
|
| Generally a handful of messages is fruitless, but a persistent
| big batch can change policies, especially if it's between
| multiple alternatives the member is already OK with.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Some of the ones that send emails on your behalf are known to
| harvest your email address for resale. Not sure if the same is
| true for the ones sending texts but wouldn't be surprised if
| that were the case.
| mrkentutbabi wrote:
| I am not familiar with US politics, but genuine question here.
| How effective is this? Does the respective representative have
| incentive to follow through or disincentive to not follow
| through?
| animal_spirits wrote:
| The only incentive to follow through is to appeal to your
| voters to get them to vote for you in the next election. But
| since most election districts are rigged via gerrymandering,
| representatives need only to appeal to a certain region's
| demographics.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Only if you actually care enough to follow up.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Given the name - is this a tool for all constituents and parties
| or is it specifically for democrats?
| protomyth wrote:
| Calling the office or faxes work better than e-mail. I suspect a
| text is a lower tier than e-mail.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Do you have a source on that? Don't they pretty much all just
| feed into the same channels these days?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Anecdotal, but this aligns with what I have heard from
| politicians.
|
| The important part is not the message, but rather the amount
| of effort put into the message. Someone using this bot puts
| in 2 minutes of effort and no money. Someone writing a letter
| puts in 20 minutes of time and a dollar for envelope and
| stamp. Someone who flies to D.C. and protests cares a lot
| more.
|
| Why? The flying protester will remember in two years. The 2
| minute texter will not. The flying protestor will vote and
| probably work on a campaign and donate money. The 2 minute
| texter might vote and probably will not do much else.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense, thanks for the insight.
|
| I've always struggled with the best way to be politically
| active, because so many things feel pointless. I generally
| just vote and donate money.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Are faxes really still a thing?
| mr_cyborg wrote:
| Maybe I'm missing something but I scanned the front page there...
| why is it called "resistbot"? This seems like more participation
| in the democratic process so I'm not quite sure what they are
| resisting.
| novaurora wrote:
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Likely a holdover from the Trump era.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Resistance_(American_polit...
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| How much impact do these services actually have on elected
| officials? They know how little effort constituents put into
| having a text sent on their behalf so they're probably going to
| put very little weight on them. Go through the effort of
| handwriting a letter is going to add quite a bit of weight to
| your message. If you are unwilling to invest a small bit of time
| and the cost of a stamp to send a message, why would they think
| it's very important to you?
| samtregar3 wrote:
| skulk wrote:
| > Go through the effort of handwriting a letter is going to add
| quite a bit of weight to your message.
|
| Really? is there even a slight chance that Rep. XYZ actually
| reads my letter and it doesn't get filtered out by an aide as
| "spam"? And furthermore, once read does my letter actually hold
| any weight against moneyed interests? It feels like an utterly
| futile and pointless exercise to pretend democracy still works.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| OpenGov recently researched this and the results largely
| backed up conventional wisdom, and suggested a trajectory of
| change. You night best learn by starting with the findings
| summary: https://v2v.opengovfoundation.org/summary-of-
| research-findin...
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I know if I received tens of thousands of duplicate texts or
| emails I'd divide the count by 10^n to estimate the real will
| for change. Or ignore them entirely. This is slacktivism.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Precisely. If finding their email address was too much for
| you, how likely are you to vote?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Depends on the congress critter probably. Just guessing that as
| younger individuals are elected to office, responses to digital
| might become more accepted. Also, take into consideration that
| the elected person's office is typcially staffed by younger
| people that are going to be much more inclined to reading a
| digital message vs and envelope that may or may not include
| more than just a harshly worded letter.
| showerst wrote:
| I know at the federal level, pretty much all the reps/senators
| see compiled reports of all constituent comms, broken down by
| (issue / stance / method / volume).
|
| Either way your message is "just" making it up to the member as
| a spreadsheet column, but text vs email vs letter might not
| actually make the difference you think. Some members might see
| letters as more serious, others might take texts as "oh my
| younger and more savvy constituents think X."
|
| At the state level, this probably varies widely.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| Hmmm honestly this sounds interesting. I assumed senators and
| such just played it by ear.
|
| Do you have personal experience with how these are calculated
| or used? Good to know that some reps are actually using data
| haha.
| honksillet wrote:
| All the examples on the splash page are current Democrat
| priorities. Even if you are left, you are unlikely to agree with
| 100% of one party's platform. (If you do, start thinking
| critically please.) Can this tool be used to support your own
| priorities or is it just a retweet/amplify button for the
| Democrat party line?
| camgunz wrote:
| If you scroll down even a little bit you'll see:
|
| > Create Your Own Campaigns
|
| > Go beyond writing to your officials and learn how to organize
| powerful text campaigns that drive action.
| matteotom wrote:
| > If you do, start thinking critically please
|
| While there are some topics where I agree with both major
| parties, and many issues where both are near equally bad, I
| have yet to come across a national policy issue where
| Republicans are better than Democrats (even if the Democrats'
| policy is still not great). So yeah, I don't agree with one
| party 100% of the time, but I will support them 100% of the
| time over the alternative.
| gzer0 wrote:
| The first example I see is expanded access to voting rights.
| Since when did this become a partisan issue?
|
| Between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed 34
| laws restricting access to voting [1]. This should be a concern
| for any American citizen with the right to vote; don't turn
| this into some politicized drama.
|
| Let me be clear; this is the very foundation of our democracy.
| I find it simply appalling that there would be proponents for
| this.
|
| [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/voti...
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > The first example I see is expanded access to voting
| rights. Since when did this become a partisan issue?
|
| Since at least the fifteenth amendment (1870).
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > The first example I see is expanded access to voting
| rights. Since when did this become a partisan issue?
|
| It has always been an issue of deep division in the USA.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| > Since when did this become a partisan issue?
|
| Right around the 70s iirc. That's roughly when the modern
| progressive wing of the democratic party started to coalesce,
| and they've always had a big focus on it.
|
| Though it's a little weird how much heat it generates given
| that it's only a "top 5" issue for about 6% of people. [0] If
| that few people people even bring it up on polls, I'd expect
| any attempts to create drama out of it to fall flat much more
| than they do.
|
| [0] https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/AP-NORC-
| Decemb...
| abeppu wrote:
| I think there's a more recent flip side to it.
|
| The two most recent Republican presidents got into office
| while failing to win the popular vote. Prior to Bush, that
| hadn't happened since the 19th century. In that context the
| GOP learned from those experiences that it's more important
| to have the right rules keep you in power than it is to
| actually have the support of the governed.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| That seems more likely to be because the GOP has
| rigorously cultivated a base that's advantaged by the
| electoral college.
|
| It's just weird how much culture warring happens over
| this when most people are ambivalent at best, and the
| types of voting restrictions we're talking about don't
| have much of an impact on turnout.[0] I suppose everyone
| has to have a hobby, but I guess I kind of expect this
| stuff to track things that are salient to the populace.
|
| [0] https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-
| abstract/136/4/2615/628...
|
| Convenience link to sci-hub for anyone wanting the full
| text: https://sci-hub.st/10.1093/qje/qjab019
| abeppu wrote:
| I think it's wrong to generalize from voter id laws to
| "the types of voting restrictions we're talking about".
| Other stuff that's being pushed:
|
| - limitations on early voting
|
| - limitations on mail voting windows
|
| - criminalizing helping people return their mail ballots
| (including disabled people)
|
| - sending mail ballots not specifically requested
|
| - voter roll purges
|
| When these are paired with stuff that isn't statutory
| (fewer voting machines per capita causing long lines at
| particular polling places), I don't think it's a stretch
| to think there would be aggregate impacts that are
| significant given the narrow margins that we often tend
| to see.
| ByteJockey wrote:
| Could be, I suppose. Though for most of those, I'd expect
| them to have approximately the same impact as voter id
| laws. The big exception being voter roll purges in states
| without same day registration, that one seems most likely
| to have an impact.
|
| > given the narrow margins that we often tend to see.
|
| Most elections really aren't that narrow (hence the high
| incumbency rate). The few that are just end up dominating
| the news cycles.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed
| 34 laws restricting access to voting [1]. This should be a
| concern for any American citizen with the right to vote;
| don't turn this into some politicized drama.
|
| It _is_ a politicized drama. Voter id laws are reasonable,
| the majority of Americans think so, and calling them
| "restricted access to voting" is literally true but
| dishonest.
|
| "Resistbot" (from "the resistance") is kitsch, especially
| since the left controls the government.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Voter ID laws are perfectly reasonable, so long as people
| can easily obtain ID. That is not the case.
|
| https://225egw40g2k99t0ud3pbf2ct-wpengine.netdna-
| ssl.com/wp-...
| slibhb wrote:
| As I said, this is a "politicized drama". There is no
| solid evidence that voter id laws have any impact on
| voter turnout. The vast majority of Americans (80%) of
| all skin color support these laws. Describing them as
| "voter restriction laws" is literally true but dishonest
| and dishonesty is bad.
| slg wrote:
| >There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any
| impact on voter turnout... Describing them as "voter
| restriction laws" is literally true but dishonest and
| dishonesty is bad.
|
| That argument goes both ways:
|
| There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any
| impact on voter fraud... Describing them as "anti-voter
| fraud laws" is literally true but dishonest and
| dishonesty is bad.
|
| Plus the anti-voter id argument isn't even necessarily
| about turnout. Someone being unable to vote is still bad
| even if they weren't planning to actually vote. Many of
| these people are caught in a cycle of disenfranchisement.
| It isn't surprising that people who have historically had
| their voting rights infringed upon have decided to stop
| engaging with the system. One way to stop that cycle is
| to guarantee that these disenfranchised people will have
| the right to participate if they wish to do so.
| slibhb wrote:
| > There is no solid evidence that voter id laws have any
| impact on voter fraud... Describing them as "anti-voter
| fraud laws" is literally true but dishonest and
| dishonesty is bad.
|
| Agreed. Republicans talking about widespread "voter
| fraud" are liars.
| slg wrote:
| So why do you think these laws are "reasonable" to use
| your word if you admit that the primary reason people say
| we need them is a lie?
| matteotom wrote:
| Laws shouldn't exist just because people think they'd be
| a good idea. There's also no evidence that voter ID laws
| prevent voter fraud, or even that voter fraud happens at
| any meaningful rate. Advocating for unnecessary
| restrictions without evidence is dishonest and dishonesty
| is bad.
| slibhb wrote:
| I'm not strongly in favor of voter id laws (the deep blue
| area I live in has them). I just think it's dishonest to
| refer to them as "voter suppression". And I agree that
| there's no evidence of substantial voter fraud.
| matteotom wrote:
| Making it harder for people to vote is literally voter
| suppression. You might argue that it is ineffective voter
| suppression, but I don't think you can argue that adding
| unnecessary steps to voting, and making penalties for
| making mistakes harsher while making it easier to make
| mistakes, is anything else.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Making it harder for people to vote is literally voter
| suppression
|
| As I said upthread, it's "literally true but dishonest".
| Barring children from voting is literally voter
| suppression but calling it that is stupid.
|
| > I don't think you can argue that adding unnecessary
| steps to voting, and making penalties for making mistakes
| harsher while making it easier to make mistakes, is
| anything else.
|
| Reasonable people can disagree over whether showing an id
| to vote is "unnecessary". The fact remains that voter id
| laws are not unreasonable, not beyond the pale, most
| Americans support them, and this whole thing is a
| manufactured political drama.
| nwiswell wrote:
| > Barring children from voting is literally voter
| suppression
|
| Actually, no, it's not. Maybe this is pedantic, but
| children are not, and have never been, putative voters
| and therefore are not being suppressed.
|
| Minority groups less likely to have IDs are voters,
| however. 8% of white Americans do not have government
| photo ID, whereas 25% of African-American citizens do
| not[1].
|
| [1] https://www.aclu.org/other/oppose-voter-id-
| legislation-fact-...
| [deleted]
| kangaroozach wrote:
| There is no evidence that someone will ever try to rob
| your house. You should remove the lock on your door.
| clairity wrote:
| no, whether id is easy to get or not is entirely beside
| the point. by constitution, we're _decidedly not_ a
| papers-please nation, despite the slippery slope you seem
| to support.
|
| voting should be plentiful, accessible, subsidized, and
| unimpeded, not gatekept, especially not by a surreptitous
| effort to implement national id.
| Amezarak wrote:
| The number of people that cannot easily obtain and do not
| already have a state-issued photo ID is very small,
| practically negligible - to our great misfortune, modern
| life has made it very difficult to leave your house
| without papers. Your own link goes into great detail
| about all the different photo ids the state offers and
| the different ways to obtain them and the initiatives to
| make it even easier.
|
| This is another one of those bizarre mismatches between
| American and European politics, I suppose. In much of
| Europe (and most of the world, really), photo ID is
| expected and it often isn't even free, like it is in much
| of the US if you qualify. It certainly isn't easier to
| get! Your own Wisconsin-based link provides information
| about an IDPP process that allows you to get a state ID
| _without any identifying paperwork_ for _free_! [1] The
| argument is simply that some people might find it
| inconvenient to get to a DMV within a couple years!
| (Actually, the argument in your link is also that it 's
| 'offensive' to require a photo ID to resemble its bearer
| - not an exaggeration, an exact quote.)
|
| This is definitely an example of an American issue that
| is very, very weird from the outside looking in. There's
| a lot of political and mental energy spent on a very
| microscopic issue.
|
| [1] https://bringit.wi.gov/free-id-and-identification-
| card-petit...
| slg wrote:
| Coupling a free and easy to acquire national ID for every
| citizen with the requirement to show your ID when voting
| is the obvious compromise. It makes one wonder why almost
| all the people pushing for voter ID laws refuse to engage
| with this compromise.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Because the people pushing for voter ID don't actually
| care about voter ID, they care about maintaining the
| current inequality in ability to vote.
| kangaroozach wrote:
| 100%.
| [deleted]
| kangaroozach wrote:
| Can you name a single modern or western country that doesn't
| require ID to vote? As tech people here, we understand the
| concept of authentication and KYC. Even India and Mexico,
| Canada, All of Europe require ID to vote. The only argument
| against ID to vote in order to ensure only eligible voters
| and only 1 vote, is blatantly political. And if it's racist,
| then so too must be any form of ID based covid passport which
| is being pushed hard by the same people opposing voter ID.
| riedel wrote:
| Germany [1]
|
| [1] https://www-stuttgarter--nachrichten-
| de.translate.goog/inhal...
| stevenicr wrote:
| I've been kicking the around to make something similar, so it's
| interesting.
|
| I wonder about this part near the top:
|
| '"Resistbot is the smartest technology to emerge from the
| disaster that was the 2016 election. No one else even comes
| close."
|
| Debra Cleaver, Founder, Vote.org '
|
| Is this meant to imply that the site or/and vote.org is anti-
| trump or anti-republican - or imply something else?
| 8note wrote:
| Isn't the Cambridge analytica stuff the smartest tech to have
| come out of the 2016 election?
| peterhadlaw wrote:
| Unfortunately it disappointed me so much to learn that Eric Ries
| (the Lean Startup author) is a part of this sorry "R E S I S T"
| enterprise.
|
| https://resist.bot/news/2017/09/13/the-robot-of-the-resistan...
| throwaway27727 wrote:
| I recall trying this one time a few years back to contact my
| congressman and senators. Was disappointed to see that the only
| available options were canned messages with specific viewpoints,
| and that it seemed to let me send those messages to politicians
| on only one side of the aisle.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| I'm not a resident of the USA but it doesn't seem like it would
| be very effective. Members of Congress only seem to care about
| filling their own pockets via lobbying and insider trading.
| Improving the country seems to be an afterthought for them and
| even if they wanted to, they're too out of touch to do so. Hence
| the end of net neutrality, the constant bills to kill privacy,
| and the way they waste the time of big tech CEOs when they call
| them in every 6 months.
| stutsmansoft wrote:
| Can confirm. They don't care, at least my reps in Texas don't.
|
| I get form letters loosely related to the issue I complained
| about, and sometimes not even remotely related.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Members of Congress behave like mostly unmanaged employees with
| bad incentives behave.
|
| If you had a team where the manager didn't ever do anything
| except send copy/pasted messages out via Slackbot and where the
| workers were in high demand from another manager who could
| offer them a lot more (as well as threaten their jobs a lot
| more), would you really expect those workers to be working in
| the interests of their manager?
|
| As that is the state of American politics today.
|
| Complain about Congress all you want, but fundamentally the
| people chose them and decide whether or not they get fired.
| Most people are just absentee managers.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| Nice initiative but I fear the principle of this design is flawed
| and will only prove once more that the working class as a whole
| has no real power. Technology can solve many of the problems of
| society but I don't think it will in this fashion.
|
| Asking nicely or many times won't do much because the people who
| run a society are the ones who control production, not the ones
| who mediate policies. In short, this is not the root of the
| problem.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They do have power but that comes from voting and people need
| to be willing to vote and vote consistently.
|
| If you are only willing to contact your elected officials using
| this bot and prior methods like letter writing and email were
| too much for you, then there is a decent chance that you are
| too lazy to take any other action.
|
| Imagine if you had a manager who was only willing to tell you
| to work hard with a Slack bot. Messaging each employee
| individually would be too much work for them. Would you take
| that manager all that seriously?
| callalex wrote:
| Resistbot will also help you register to vote and will remind
| you when an election of interest is occurring soon.
| Atlas667 wrote:
| The problem is not ignorance of the constituents interests or
| their volition.
|
| The political system this claims to help was not created by
| and for the working class, it was thought out, designed and
| implemented by and for the bourgeoisie. It can't serve the
| majority even if it tried. There are no mechanisms for it,
| and, not only that, the whole system will prevent their
| creation. It's not about adding plugins, it's about changing
| the system.
|
| This app was probably funded by the democrats to seem more
| radical and progressive, but is just a tool for aesthetics.
| They use these to gather well meaning non conforming
| professionals and citizens around actions that are ultimately
| inconsequential and also wont waste the opportunity to
| trigger conservatives while they're at it, adding kindling
| the useless culture war that owns the US.
| aaron695 wrote:
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-06 23:02 UTC)