The real question - does it actually work - and would it work just about as well with a 25% (or more) reduction in harassment? One message to recipients is that the campaigns/candidates don’t know what they’re doing when they use this approach.
I must have missed something or I am naive? I simply don’t reward campaign outreach contacts by any party or candidate(which is most)that use methods, texts or emails etc that are in this family of misrepresentations and simply delete early and often. Using other sources of information on issues or candidates as required to stay informed, I outreach directly to campaign or candidate for information and/or contribute. Even this method can generate unwanted texts and emails from campaigns which I delete or unsubscribe but seems controllable.
I contributed several hundred dollars across various campaigns in 2020. As a result I’m now inundated with spam texts and emails everyday during every election cycle. I have zero desire to donate to anyone going forward because of it.
"The only problem, however, was that voting “No” was the pro-choice position. This text wasn’t a form of political theatrics or a deceptive fundraising tactic, it was an outright lie."
Important inclusion here. I know it wasn't the main point of this post, but the prevalence of outright lies as a Republican political tactic is an impactful and underrated issue. It's a problem for Republicans that the public doesn't really *want* upper-class tax cuts, sweeping social program rollbacks, and abortion bans. So instead of moderating these goals, they tell outright lies to win, and then pursue them anyway. For example - Trump's promise that he wouldn't take away anyone's health coverage absolutely helped him win in 2016, but it just turned out he was lying. Not shading the truth or engaging in political spin - outright lying about the magnitude and direction of Republican policies.
It's a challenge for small-d democratic decision making when major political movements behave this way. I do wonder if Dems have made this easier for Republicans to get away with by being insufficiently moderate and thereby torching our credibility with a lot of voters - and if so, this is one of many reasons we desperately need to moderate and improve our standing with people who are culturally conservative but nevertheless don't want the full GOP agenda imposed on them.
That footnote says everything about current politics. Both sides are ridiculous but the ridiculousness is HIGHLY asymmetrical. The person who had my phone number before me (25 years ago!) is apparently a Republican and the stuff I receive for him is asinine to a, frankly, insulting degree.
I hate, HATE all the Democratic spam and I have just taken to being outright hostile to "reward" someone who managed to actually get through my barriers and actually reach me. But I'd probably go to jail for the things I'd say to a Republican campaign volunteer.
Adam Schiff is the absolute worst for this. Multiple emails a day, I don't even live in California. I figured after the primary was over it would stop, but even though he has more money than God in his campaign account and is up against token opposition, it's still non-stop
I think the Democratic party also doesn't recognize that solicitations for money are the only communications most people get from office holders and seekers. And while "We're about to miss our goal!" and "Things are getting desperate!" may be good for drumming up money from 2% of recipients, you're sending the other 98% regular updates on how much you're failing - who wants to support a party that always one $20 monthly donation away from collapsing?
(While I'm a guaranteed STOP response to any text and an unsubscribe from any e-mail, for months I was getting Twitter ads (I miss Tweetbot) from Ruben Gallego that always said he was losing to Keri Lake 48% to 45%. My God man, if you're losing to that nut bar after Sinema dropped out, why am I going to waste my time and money supporting you? It turns out polling is light and he's up in the recent ones, so why are you tweeting out a message of incompetence?)
"I think the Democratic party also doesn't recognize that solicitations for money are the only communications most people get from office holders and seekers. And while "We're about to miss our goal!" and "Things are getting desperate!" may be good for drumming up money from 2% of recipients, you're sending the other 98% regular updates on how much you're failing - who wants to support a party that always one $20 monthly donation away from collapsing?
(While I'm a guaranteed STOP response to any text and an unsubscribe from any e-mail, for months I was getting Twitter ads (I miss Tweetbot) from Ruben Gallego that always said he was losing to Keri Lake 48% to 45%. My God man, if you're losing to that nut bar after Sinema dropped out, why am I going to waste my time and money supporting you? It turns out polling is light and he's up in the recent ones, so why are you tweeting out a message of incompetence?)"
Well it is all annoying as fuck. And it may be a heavy contributor to doomerism among Democratic base groups, and even the mainstream journalistic class, many of whom might have donated to campaigns and be recipients of this stuff.
......But, but, but....Maybe it's still been working. This style has been out there consistently since at least 2018 and before, and Democrats have over performed polling consistently since 2022 in off-year elections and special.
Maybe its a masochistic pain in the ass, but it works.
No regulatory force behind this or any other incentive for either party to do this. Ergo I feel pretty good in predicting that this will never happen. Politics is an adversarial system and no one is going to give up an advantage like this. 1000X this when we realize, as MY has said in that past that there are no parties in charge anymore, just very distribute clans and factions battling for control. Great ideas but it will need to the force of law behind it .
I put an end to my party affiliation at the registrar. It stopped a lot of the junk mail and texts. If more people did that, I think politicians would take us more seriously.
It's not just a first-mover problem, it's that the payoff remains really high for defecting from mutual cooperative political messaging disarmament. Just like replying STOP only cuts off one hydra head - welcome emails show an email address is live, that address gets passed on to some other committee, #welp. And relying on the DNC/RNC to self-police only does so much when plenty of non-affiliated actors also flood the zone. Like said Macedonian spam farms...(singlehandedly besting Baumol's in the political ad industry, their productivity is amazing)
I'd prefer the less-targeted "congestion pricing" approach to mass communications traffic - charging slightly more for bulk messaging, ratcheting up with frequency. This would help address non-political spam as well. Such shotgun approaches rely heavily on cost per message staying negligible; it doesn't matter how unlikely someone is to respond when the cost of sending rounds to epsilon. Hopefully it'd have more bipartisan support too - even if Republicans send more political spam (citation?), everyone gets endless unwanted calls from Wells Fargo or State Farm or whomever.
Imagine that you are a Trump hating conservative like me who is still registered as a Republican. I get spammed from both sides! I am pretty sure that I am not the only Slow Boring reader with a profile like that. I disagree plenty with some of Matt's takes, but agree with plenty also. I am mature enough to understand that smart and caring people may disagree on the best solutions to problems.
Being somewhat of a free speech absolutist, getting text spammed makes me want to rethink that sentiment when it comes to this sort of thing. I think there may come a day when political spam has to be specifically invited. It is laughable to think that the RNC or DNC are going to regulate themselves in this regard. They'll try to get around it, but if it reduced it by half, I would consider that an improvement.
> This included obscuring and altering the sender field
Oh my god, this one may not objectively be the most deceptive, but it drives me crazy. A prime example of the attention economy arms race where absolutely every channel to push the message must be used, or else.
There's is an attack on this legally that doesn't have First Amendment issues, though it's a bit of a bank shot.
The email lists they use are a mess, and include lots of people who are not US citizens and therefore who cannot legally donate (I know because I get loads, and I've never donated to a US candidate).
Soliciting a donation from a foreigner is against campaign financing law. So... sending an email to a foreigner is a campaign financing breach. Set an automatic $1000 fine for each such email and have the FEC set up a nice easy website for us to report them to.
The result is that the email lists will have to be far more closely managed, and that means that it will be much easier to get off them, it means that they will have to stop sending you emails after a period of time anyway unless you positively confirm that you want to keep receiving them (because you might have ceased to be eligible to donate, e.g. because you became a federal contractor).
For anyone interested, lots of US publications have my email address from when I subscribed, or set up an account for commenting, or joined their mailing list; several of those seem to have sold the email address to campaigns, either directly, or indirectly.
The real question - does it actually work - and would it work just about as well with a 25% (or more) reduction in harassment? One message to recipients is that the campaigns/candidates don’t know what they’re doing when they use this approach.
Well written piece my friend. Love what you’re doing
I must have missed something or I am naive? I simply don’t reward campaign outreach contacts by any party or candidate(which is most)that use methods, texts or emails etc that are in this family of misrepresentations and simply delete early and often. Using other sources of information on issues or candidates as required to stay informed, I outreach directly to campaign or candidate for information and/or contribute. Even this method can generate unwanted texts and emails from campaigns which I delete or unsubscribe but seems controllable.
I contributed several hundred dollars across various campaigns in 2020. As a result I’m now inundated with spam texts and emails everyday during every election cycle. I have zero desire to donate to anyone going forward because of it.
"The only problem, however, was that voting “No” was the pro-choice position. This text wasn’t a form of political theatrics or a deceptive fundraising tactic, it was an outright lie."
Important inclusion here. I know it wasn't the main point of this post, but the prevalence of outright lies as a Republican political tactic is an impactful and underrated issue. It's a problem for Republicans that the public doesn't really *want* upper-class tax cuts, sweeping social program rollbacks, and abortion bans. So instead of moderating these goals, they tell outright lies to win, and then pursue them anyway. For example - Trump's promise that he wouldn't take away anyone's health coverage absolutely helped him win in 2016, but it just turned out he was lying. Not shading the truth or engaging in political spin - outright lying about the magnitude and direction of Republican policies.
It's a challenge for small-d democratic decision making when major political movements behave this way. I do wonder if Dems have made this easier for Republicans to get away with by being insufficiently moderate and thereby torching our credibility with a lot of voters - and if so, this is one of many reasons we desperately need to moderate and improve our standing with people who are culturally conservative but nevertheless don't want the full GOP agenda imposed on them.
That footnote says everything about current politics. Both sides are ridiculous but the ridiculousness is HIGHLY asymmetrical. The person who had my phone number before me (25 years ago!) is apparently a Republican and the stuff I receive for him is asinine to a, frankly, insulting degree.
I hate, HATE all the Democratic spam and I have just taken to being outright hostile to "reward" someone who managed to actually get through my barriers and actually reach me. But I'd probably go to jail for the things I'd say to a Republican campaign volunteer.
Adam Schiff is the absolute worst for this. Multiple emails a day, I don't even live in California. I figured after the primary was over it would stop, but even though he has more money than God in his campaign account and is up against token opposition, it's still non-stop
I think the Democratic party also doesn't recognize that solicitations for money are the only communications most people get from office holders and seekers. And while "We're about to miss our goal!" and "Things are getting desperate!" may be good for drumming up money from 2% of recipients, you're sending the other 98% regular updates on how much you're failing - who wants to support a party that always one $20 monthly donation away from collapsing?
(While I'm a guaranteed STOP response to any text and an unsubscribe from any e-mail, for months I was getting Twitter ads (I miss Tweetbot) from Ruben Gallego that always said he was losing to Keri Lake 48% to 45%. My God man, if you're losing to that nut bar after Sinema dropped out, why am I going to waste my time and money supporting you? It turns out polling is light and he's up in the recent ones, so why are you tweeting out a message of incompetence?)
"I think the Democratic party also doesn't recognize that solicitations for money are the only communications most people get from office holders and seekers. And while "We're about to miss our goal!" and "Things are getting desperate!" may be good for drumming up money from 2% of recipients, you're sending the other 98% regular updates on how much you're failing - who wants to support a party that always one $20 monthly donation away from collapsing?
(While I'm a guaranteed STOP response to any text and an unsubscribe from any e-mail, for months I was getting Twitter ads (I miss Tweetbot) from Ruben Gallego that always said he was losing to Keri Lake 48% to 45%. My God man, if you're losing to that nut bar after Sinema dropped out, why am I going to waste my time and money supporting you? It turns out polling is light and he's up in the recent ones, so why are you tweeting out a message of incompetence?)"
Well it is all annoying as fuck. And it may be a heavy contributor to doomerism among Democratic base groups, and even the mainstream journalistic class, many of whom might have donated to campaigns and be recipients of this stuff.
......But, but, but....Maybe it's still been working. This style has been out there consistently since at least 2018 and before, and Democrats have over performed polling consistently since 2022 in off-year elections and special.
Maybe its a masochistic pain in the ass, but it works.
My parents stopped giving to some charities because they’d give…and be asked for more! Some organizations need to learn restraint.
No regulatory force behind this or any other incentive for either party to do this. Ergo I feel pretty good in predicting that this will never happen. Politics is an adversarial system and no one is going to give up an advantage like this. 1000X this when we realize, as MY has said in that past that there are no parties in charge anymore, just very distribute clans and factions battling for control. Great ideas but it will need to the force of law behind it .
I put an end to my party affiliation at the registrar. It stopped a lot of the junk mail and texts. If more people did that, I think politicians would take us more seriously.
It's not just a first-mover problem, it's that the payoff remains really high for defecting from mutual cooperative political messaging disarmament. Just like replying STOP only cuts off one hydra head - welcome emails show an email address is live, that address gets passed on to some other committee, #welp. And relying on the DNC/RNC to self-police only does so much when plenty of non-affiliated actors also flood the zone. Like said Macedonian spam farms...(singlehandedly besting Baumol's in the political ad industry, their productivity is amazing)
I'd prefer the less-targeted "congestion pricing" approach to mass communications traffic - charging slightly more for bulk messaging, ratcheting up with frequency. This would help address non-political spam as well. Such shotgun approaches rely heavily on cost per message staying negligible; it doesn't matter how unlikely someone is to respond when the cost of sending rounds to epsilon. Hopefully it'd have more bipartisan support too - even if Republicans send more political spam (citation?), everyone gets endless unwanted calls from Wells Fargo or State Farm or whomever.
Imagine that you are a Trump hating conservative like me who is still registered as a Republican. I get spammed from both sides! I am pretty sure that I am not the only Slow Boring reader with a profile like that. I disagree plenty with some of Matt's takes, but agree with plenty also. I am mature enough to understand that smart and caring people may disagree on the best solutions to problems.
Being somewhat of a free speech absolutist, getting text spammed makes me want to rethink that sentiment when it comes to this sort of thing. I think there may come a day when political spam has to be specifically invited. It is laughable to think that the RNC or DNC are going to regulate themselves in this regard. They'll try to get around it, but if it reduced it by half, I would consider that an improvement.
Do parties still accept federal matching funds? If so, the acceptance could be made conditional on not sending any text message spam.
> This included obscuring and altering the sender field
Oh my god, this one may not objectively be the most deceptive, but it drives me crazy. A prime example of the attention economy arms race where absolutely every channel to push the message must be used, or else.
There's is an attack on this legally that doesn't have First Amendment issues, though it's a bit of a bank shot.
The email lists they use are a mess, and include lots of people who are not US citizens and therefore who cannot legally donate (I know because I get loads, and I've never donated to a US candidate).
Soliciting a donation from a foreigner is against campaign financing law. So... sending an email to a foreigner is a campaign financing breach. Set an automatic $1000 fine for each such email and have the FEC set up a nice easy website for us to report them to.
The result is that the email lists will have to be far more closely managed, and that means that it will be much easier to get off them, it means that they will have to stop sending you emails after a period of time anyway unless you positively confirm that you want to keep receiving them (because you might have ceased to be eligible to donate, e.g. because you became a federal contractor).
For anyone interested, lots of US publications have my email address from when I subscribed, or set up an account for commenting, or joined their mailing list; several of those seem to have sold the email address to campaigns, either directly, or indirectly.