> When you donate to the campaign of Candidate X through ActBlue, the campaign of Candidate X owns that data. ActBlue provides the data to them, and they are free to use it as they see fit. The campaign of Candidate X is often (but not always!) selling it to other campaigns and electoral organizations.
That's a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same: your data is going to get shared and you'll be hounded to death.
This isn't unique to ActBlue. It's the reality of making any political contribution to anybody. It's why I stopped making political contributions many years ago.
> Voters and donors don’t actually care which step in the data chain of custody is to blame for the barrage of irrelevant messages. But those of us who work on Democratic tech infrastructure sure do care.
You're correct that this isn't unique to ActBlue. That's the overarching point. I disagree that it's a distinction without a difference. If you're interested in analyzing, critiquing, and changing the functions and outputs of a complex system, it's important to understand the domains of the pieces of the system. If you search most social media for "ActBlue" you find endless examples of this misunderstanding.
Donating to them has been one of my greatest regrets. For months I’ve been playing with the idea of getting a new number because I have found no way to treat the inundation of texts like I do with spam email, but my experience with Google voice has told me no number is completely safe from spam, where every once in a while I get calls collecting debt from the person whose number it used to be.
I am not suggesting it as a solution, but after I made a political donation (not to ActBlue), the onslaught only really stopped after I moved and changed my phone number. I didn't move or change my number because of this, though.
Even now, years later, I still get the occasional spam related to it, but it's little enough to just be background noise.
[+] [-] JohnFen|1 year ago|reply
That's a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same: your data is going to get shared and you'll be hounded to death.
This isn't unique to ActBlue. It's the reality of making any political contribution to anybody. It's why I stopped making political contributions many years ago.
[+] [-] m-hodges|1 year ago|reply
> Voters and donors don’t actually care which step in the data chain of custody is to blame for the barrage of irrelevant messages. But those of us who work on Democratic tech infrastructure sure do care.
You're correct that this isn't unique to ActBlue. That's the overarching point. I disagree that it's a distinction without a difference. If you're interested in analyzing, critiquing, and changing the functions and outputs of a complex system, it's important to understand the domains of the pieces of the system. If you search most social media for "ActBlue" you find endless examples of this misunderstanding.
[+] [-] charleskinbote|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|1 year ago|reply
Even now, years later, I still get the occasional spam related to it, but it's little enough to just be background noise.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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