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Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

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Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#21

Post by MattGaiser »

Atlas667 wrote: post #7

Nice initiative but I fear the principle of this design is flawed and will only prove once more that the working class as a whole has no real power. Technology can solve many of the problems of society but I don't think it will in this fashion. Asking nicely or many times won't do much because the people who run a society are the ones who control production, not the ones who mediate policies. In short, this is not th…

They do have power but that comes from voting and people need to be willing to vote and vote consistently.

If you are only willing to contact your elected officials using this bot and prior methods like letter writing and email were too much for you, then there is a decent chance that you are too lazy to take any other action.

Imagine if you had a manager who was only willing to tell you to work hard with a Slack bot. Messaging each employee individually would be too much work for them. Would you take that manager all that seriously?

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#22

Post by c7DJTLrn »

I'm not a resident of the USA but it doesn't seem like it would be very effective. Members of Congress only seem to care about filling their own pockets via lobbying and insider trading. Improving the country seems to be an afterthought for them and even if they wanted to, they're too out of touch to do so. Hence the end of net neutrality, the constant bills to kill privacy, and the way they waste the time of big tech CEOs when they call them in every 6 months.

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#25

Post by MattGaiser »

notreallyserio wrote: post #14
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #3

How much impact do these services actually have on elected officials? They know how little effort constituents put into having a text sent on their behalf so they're probably going to put very little weight on them. Go through the effort of handwriting a letter is going to add quite a bit of weight to your message. If you are unwilling to invest a small bit of time and the cost of a stamp to send a message, why would…

I know if I received tens of thousands of duplicate texts or emails I'd divide the count by 10^n to estimate the real will for change. Or ignore them entirely. This is slacktivism.

Precisely. If finding their email address was too much for you, how likely are you to vote?

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#26

Post by MattGaiser »

mr_cyborg wrote: post #24

Maybe I’m missing something but I scanned the front page there… why is it called “resistbot”? This seems like more participation in the democratic process so I’m not quite sure what they are resisting.

Likely a holdover from the Trump era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Resistance_(American_polit...

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#27

Post by throwaway27727 »

I recall trying this one time a few years back to contact my congressman and senators. Was disappointed to see that the only available options were canned messages with specific viewpoints, and that it seemed to let me send those messages to politicians on only one side of the aisle.

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#28

Post by MattGaiser »

c7DJTLrn wrote: post #22

I'm not a resident of the USA but it doesn't seem like it would be very effective. Members of Congress only seem to care about filling their own pockets via lobbying and insider trading. Improving the country seems to be an afterthought for them and even if they wanted to, they're too out of touch to do so. Hence the end of net neutrality, the constant bills to kill privacy, and the way they waste the time of big tec…

Members of Congress behave like mostly unmanaged employees with bad incentives behave.

If you had a team where the manager didn't ever do anything except send copy/pasted messages out via Slackbot and where the workers were in high demand from another manager who could offer them a lot more (as well as threaten their jobs a lot more), would you really expect those workers to be working in the interests of their manager?

As that is the state of American politics today.

Complain about Congress all you want, but fundamentally the people chose them and decide whether or not they get fired. Most people are just absentee managers.

Re: Resistbot: Contact your officials by sending a text

#29

Post by callalex »

MattGaiser wrote: post #21
Atlas667 wrote: post #7

Nice initiative but I fear the principle of this design is flawed and will only prove once more that the working class as a whole has no real power. Technology can solve many of the problems of society but I don't think it will in this fashion. Asking nicely or many times won't do much because the people who run a society are the ones who control production, not the ones who mediate policies. In short, this is not th…

They do have power but that comes from voting and people need to be willing to vote and vote consistently. If you are only willing to contact your elected officials using this bot and prior methods like letter writing and email were too much for you, then there is a decent chance that you are too lazy to take any other action. Imagine if you had a manager who was only willing to tell you to work hard with a Slack bot…

Resistbot will also help you register to vote and will remind you when an election of interest is occurring soon.
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