LTO Links #304

Dems face TikTok campaigning challenge

Learn. Test. Optimize.

Issue #304 |

Campaigns

The Seven-Minute Abs of Electioneering

"An awful lot of people who care about politics are simply not playing the right game. They want to do their part. So, they donate money knowing that their dollars will scale, even if not so efficiently. They make phone calls to strangers knowing that they might get lucky and connect positively with a stranger on the line, but the time they spend phone-banking feels mostly wasted and exhausting.

"They aren’t in communities. And so they lose political fights they care about. No amount of feelings of righteous anger or knowledge of political factoids will save them. The postcard campaigns to strangers won’t save them. How could they, when these people are in a laughably uneven fight against people like me who can bring in a dozen votes with almost no effort at all. Professional campaigners try their best to cultivate neighborliness among strangers, such as by investing in “relational organizing” strategies. But that’s no match against communities of people who know each other already."

Email

Leader McCarthy, Rep. Lesko, and GOP Leaders Introduce Bill to Combat Big Tech’s Biased Algorithms

"This bill would also increase transparency on their filtering practices by requiring operators of email services to produce quarterly transparency reports."

Fundraising

New crypto fundraising start-up will take political donations in digital currencies as 2022 midterms heat up

"Dobelle is plowing ahead with the launch of Engage Labs and Engage Raise despite crypto’s struggles, believing that digital currency markets will rebound by the beginning of next year and carry through the 2024 election, when crypto-related fundraising could play a role in the presidential vote."

Social Media

Biden’s TikTok dance

"One way: the Democratic National Committee has set up a TikTok account after advising campaigns in 2020 to avoid the app. The committee is taking security precautions. It has dedicated devices for TikTok specifically that are isolated from “other DNC assets/processes/business as a mitigation to the privacy risk,” the committee said."

One-Third of Tweets From U.S. Adults Are Political

"Most notably, Americans ages 50 and older make up 24% of the U.S. adult Twitter population but produce nearly 80% of all political tweets. And 36% of the tweets produced by the typical (median) U.S. adult Twitter user age 50 or older contain political content, roughly five times the share (7%) for the tweets from the typical 18- to 49-year-old."

Technology

Slack bans conservative immigration group from tech platform

"FAIR President Dan Stein told Fox News Digital that FAIR has used the platform since 2016 and its mission hasn’t changed in that time. He also denied any claim that his organization is a 'hate group.'"

You’ll be relieved to know these images of beloved childhood characters at the Capitol riots were A.I. generated

"But politics isn’t technically allowed. According to the content policy for OpenAI, the San Francisco company behind DALL-E Mini, users are asked not to create, upload, or share images of 'politicians, ballot-boxes, protests, or other content that may be used to influence the political process or to campaign.'"

  • [PODCAST] Bringing Presidential Campaign-style Tech Down Ballot – Brad Parscale (Campaign Nucleus)