Posts tagged "online petitions"
  1. Notes: 1 / 3 months ago 

    haveheartbeast-willtravel asked: I had asked you earlier "And okay, what would you consider proof then? Does the government body have to come directly forward and say that these petitions stopped them? Because I don’t know that they will and I’m not sure that even really happens with bills presented in just a physical format." In reference to the correlation = causation issue.

    yes. That would be a great start towards proving online petitions do shit except

    • set the constituency up to take the fall when the bill passes/doesn’t pass because “you didn’t sign that petition HARD ENOUGH”
    • funnel off effort/care into meaningless dead ends
    • give you warm fuzzies without actually doing diddly

  2. Notes: 12 / 3 months ago 

    Having worked as an astro-turfer I can tell you with authority that e-mailing/writing/calling your congressional rep is literally never going to go in front of anyone who gives a shit. 99% of the time, an unpaid teenage volunteer will glance at it long enough to grab the return address and send you an auto-generated reply. The only* way something you said as an individual constituent ends up on a congressperson’s mind is if literally EVERYONE has tried to contact them about it, and a senior staffer having dealt with a mountain of mail and gridlocked phones all day about SOPA is like “Ma’am or Sir, people are real angry about this.” Even that would probably be ignored if there weren’t industry lobbyists or major economic/donations players scheduling meetings with senior staffers about it. In a lot of ways, writing your rep is as pointless as voting, except even more pointless because there are no third-parties and instead of needing 50%+1 you need a super duper double secret majority for someone to even begin to consider considering whatever the fuck you’re concerned about.

    *There is an exception if you have a particularly heart-breaking or uplifting story that is tangentially related to the congressperson’s pet issue that a staffer realizes they can use while stumping for donations.

    - another good post on online petitions/”writing your congressman”

  3. Notes: 9 / 3 months ago 
    The truth is, online petitions to Congress and others are pretty much a sham. Most of the time, the organizers don’t follow up on the petition, some of the time the vendor has some kind of bug and they don’t end up being delivered. If and when they do go end up getting delivered, members don’t read them. There’s no possible way they could — according to the Congressional Management Foundation, the House of Representatives got 99,053,399 messages via the Internet in 2004. That’s 227,708.9 messages per member of Congress. If a member took an average of 30 seconds to thoughtfully read each email they received in 2004, it’d take them 79 days solely to read their mail from the Internet. For a member of the Senate it’s worse: 288 straight 24-hour days worth of constituent communications at 30 seconds a piece. Most people don’t spend that many hours awake in a year. In short — sometimes the mail doesn’t even get there and when it does, it rarely gets read. So why do organizations tell you to write your members in the first place? Because politicians and advocacy groups value your email address over your voice. It’s the great lie of online organizing: that your voice to Congress or your voice to whomever can make a difference. It can, it should, but not through them. Nearly every organization in Washington is focused on one thing — inventing new and interesting ways to get your email address. And they want your email address so that they can ask you for money. The truth is: my.barackobama.com was and still is, the most sophisticated suite of tools designed primarily to capture your email address and ask you for money. http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/the-distractions-of-online-petitions

    The truth is, online petitions to Congress and others are pretty much a sham. Most of the time, the organizers don’t follow up on the petition, some of the time the vendor has some kind of bug and they don’t end up being delivered. If and when they do go end up getting delivered, members don’t read them. There’s no possible way they could — according to the Congressional Management Foundation, the House of Representatives got 99,053,399 messages via the Internet in 2004. That’s 227,708.9 messages per member of Congress. If a member took an average of 30 seconds to thoughtfully read each email they received in 2004, it’d take them 79 days solely to read their mail from the Internet. For a member of the Senate it’s worse: 288 straight 24-hour days worth of constituent communications at 30 seconds a piece. Most people don’t spend that many hours awake in a year.

    In short — sometimes the mail doesn’t even get there and when it does, it rarely gets read. So why do organizations tell you to write your members in the first place?

    Because politicians and advocacy groups value your email address over your voice. It’s the great lie of online organizing: that your voice to Congress or your voice to whomever can make a difference. It can, it should, but not through them. Nearly every organization in Washington is focused on one thing — inventing new and interesting ways to get your email address. And they want your email address so that they can ask you for money. The truth is: my.barackobama.com was and still is, the most sophisticated suite of tools designed primarily to capture your email address and ask you for money.

    http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/the-distractions-of-online-petitions

     
  4. Notes: 15268 / 3 months ago  from haveheartbeast-willtravel (originally from 3liza)
    haveheartbeast-willtravel: This is very true!  They did their protesting online and got more support through the internet than they ever would have with any source outside of it.  Thank you for pointing that out. Strawman argument.  The point is not that “online activism is ineffective”.  Quite the opposite.  Multi-million dollar corporations blacking out their sites is pretty effective.  4chan writing a script to sign a petition 40 times an hour isn’t.

    haveheartbeast-willtravel:

    This is very true!  They did their protesting online and got more support through the internet than they ever would have with any source outside of it.  Thank you for pointing that out.

    Strawman argument.  The point is not that “online activism is ineffective”.  Quite the opposite.  Multi-million dollar corporations blacking out their sites is pretty effective.  4chan writing a script to sign a petition 40 times an hour isn’t.

    (Source: 3liza)

     
  5. Notes: 15268 / 3 months ago  from haveheartbeast-willtravel (originally from 3liza)
    haveheartbeast-willtravel: 3liza: haveheartbeast-willtravel: Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out. You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you?  You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things.  Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention.  And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it.  You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter.  Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter. In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous.  When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else.  They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online.  Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary? I would LOVE to see some proof.  If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day. This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions.  And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective.  EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc. Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism. EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it.  Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective.  Google putting shit on their front page was effective.  Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective. http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/ http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work. This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves. I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening?  I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link. Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know. Thanks for the links, I appreciate you going to the trouble to track them down and post them, but again, all of them rely on the “correlation = causation” argument to prove their points, an argument which just doesn’t hold up.  That online petitions exist for contentious issues is undebatable.  They exist alongside the real forces, but I have never seen any proof that they affect the issue in the least, except maybe to “raise awareness”, which is a dubious claim in of itself. As one forums poster put it, “is Veronica Mars still canceled?  Is Pete Rose allowed to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame?  Did I ever get to purchase a copy of Mother 3?”

    haveheartbeast-willtravel:

    3liza:

    haveheartbeast-willtravel:

    Okay, I like that Tor is being spread around, but this idea that online petitions do nothing and isn’t taken seriously needs to get out.

    You are aware that without online petitions that SOPA would have been voted on and passed, aren’t you?  You’re also aware that with enough pressure with online petitions governments have backed down on other things.  Believe it or not politicians do pay attention to online petitions and emails sent to them, it’s just that you need the numbers behind them to have someone pay attention.  And if you’re telling people that their voice doesn’t matter in a petition then of course less people are going to sign it and of course there’s going to be less power behind it.  You are hurting your own cause by telling people that their petitioning doesn’t matter.  Stop telling people that that doesn’t matter.

    In fact this entire thing saying that stuff online doesn’t matter is ridiculous.  When people sign petitions online they are still saying that if their representative is going to support something they will also pull their support from when they vote too and will vote for someone else.  They are still fully capable of boycotting things when they say they will online. 

    Why are you acting like doing something on the internet is useless when we have evidence to the contrary?

    I would LOVE to see some proof.  If online petitions actually work I’m going to have a much better day.

    This is the only support I’ve seen for online petitions that cites any examples, and it’s on a blog run by an online petition company who stands to gain or lose substantial amounts of ad revenue from whether or not people use online petitions.  And all the examples there do not actually include data that cites the petitions as effective.  EG, no policy-makers specifically pointing at the petitions as effective, etc.

    Slacktivism is poisonous because it’s placebo activism.

    EDIT: And the SOPA shit “worked” because it was backed by giant corporations and organizations who threw the weight of their money against it.  Wikipedia leaving GoDaddy alone was insanely effective.  Google putting shit on their front page was effective.  Wikipedia and Tumblr blacking out was effective.

    http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/09/21/slacktivism-defeats-lawful-access/

    http://www.frogloop.com/care2blog/2010/4/28/slacktivism-why-snopes-got-it-wrong-about-internet-petitions.html

    Tell me if the second link is working or not, but if it’s the link I think it is it should have cited sources on why slacktivism and online petitions in general do work.

    This is also a good article http://mashable.com/2011/10/24/slactivism-cause-engagement/ however it doesn’t deal with online petitions being effective by themselves.

    I also sadly cannot get the page you linked to to load, any idea why that might be happening?  I ask because it doesn’t seem to be my internet, it might just be something wrong with the link.

    Also, yes big organizations backed it up, but they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere as far as it did without the peoples’ support and most of the support was just online as far as I know.

    Thanks for the links, I appreciate you going to the trouble to track them down and post them, but again, all of them rely on the “correlation = causation” argument to prove their points, an argument which just doesn’t hold up. 

    That online petitions exist for contentious issues is undebatable.  They exist alongside the real forces, but I have never seen any proof that they affect the issue in the least, except maybe to “raise awareness”, which is a dubious claim in of itself.

    As one forums poster put it, “is Veronica Mars still canceled?  Is Pete Rose allowed to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame?  Did I ever get to purchase a copy of Mother 3?”

     
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