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Campaigns
Ramaswamy joins TikTok as other GOP candidates snub Chinese-owned app
Axios
“Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy on Wednesday became the first GOP presidential candidate to join TikTok, a Chinese-owned app he described as ‘digital fentanyl’ as recently as last week.”
Candidate Ramaswamy gets further into the media business (Semafor)
The DeSantis Campaign Texted Me with a Large Language Model
Alan Johnson
“I was pretty confident at this point, but not certain, so I asked it to do some math. No self respecting campaign worker would just answer a math problem, would they?”
Content
In the 2024 U.S. elections, vote for Substack
Substack
“Candidates will cut out the middlemen by using Substack as a home for their editorials—a direct channel to voters so they can make a full, intelligent case for what they will do if they’re elected. These politicians, like Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, will find that they don’t have to be reduced to tweets or sound bites in reports compiled by unsympathetic media outlets. Substack offers them a way to take control of their own narratives.”
Fundraising
Here’s how bad inflation is hitting campaign merch
Yello
“Consumers will have to shell out more for campaign merchandise this year than they did in 2020, with the cost of an official ‘Make America Great Again’ hat rising 33% in three years and other items seeing similar price hikes.”
Technology
Examining the political threat of AI persuasion bots
Greg Dale
“Like Cambridge Analytica, the fear over AI Persuadobots is looking to be overwrought. The maximum threat area is probably downballot elections. AI could make it inexpensive to create localized content, with reinforcement feedback driven by surveys, ad delivery, and ad engagement data.”
Prepare yourself. A Donald Trump chatbot is about to be unleashed.
Politico
“On Wednesday, the project will officially unveil the AI-powered avatars of 17 leading presidential candidates. Each one is a chatbot trained on reams of data generated from at least a hundred sources, like candidates’ video appearances and writings. Users can query the bots individually, ask the same question of all 17 at once, or set any two of them against each other in one-on-one debates directed by user input.”
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Staff Shake Ups At Two Big Democratic Tech Companies
Campaigns & Elections
“Nelson said he believes the cuts include 50 percent of developers working for ActionKit, an online fundraising and volunteer CRM used by progressive groups. NGP VAN didn’t respond to a request for comment from C&E on the size of the company’s layoffs.”