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Comment by whylie | Hacker News Reader

>Shadow is a firm that makes custom software for Democrats and progressives.

If I can ask, why the specific nature for their clientele? Isolating your solutions to a specific political party seems strange to me especially if the emphasis on making money. If anything, money normally supersedes political leanings at the end of the day which makes the whole fiasco even stranger to me. Wouldn't you want to provide a solution for both parties by default? Not doing so seems nefarious on it's own.

It sounds like pairing products with political leanings is not a good business decision? Which may explain where all the 'hate' is coming from - it's just bad business and sows the seeds of doubt in their credibility in the minds of many.

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Hey, I'm really glad you asked, and I'm happy to share. The reason that most people start companies in politics is because they have strong political leanings. You do it because you believe strongly in something or someone and want to support it, even if it pays less or sucks.

Even if you wanted to cross the aisle, it would be hard. If you work for Democrats, Republicans will not work with you. If you work for Republicans, Democrats will not work with you.

Going to especially second that last bit. Not everybody is expressly data science, but most companies start running into some sort of data at one point or another.

Campaigns aren't wrong to be concerned about who has their data. There is good historical reason for them to be skeptical that security on your system will be strong enough to prevent customers from accessing other customer's data. https://time.com/4155185/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-data...

Now imagine getting buy-in for using customer data to improve your models.

I can't blame campaigns for being paranoid about vendors potentially going across the aisle. NationBuilder is one of the only big names I know that does it. They are in a unique and unenviable position given the death grip NGP VAN has, and they pay a big price for it on nearly every front.

Really interesting point here. Although, there is a little more nuance needed and this is one of the big issues plaguing the campaigning software space - not all are created for the same goals and not all offer the same services.

If you take your example of NationBuilder, a company I know well as I led their European expansion, it only sold software not data. Unlike most American campaign software, NationBuilder does not sell data as part of their package. NationBuilder does not believe that you can create a sustainable and powerful community by using data that you have purchased, and thus only sells the platform.

So yes I agree with you that while campaigns can (and should) be paranoid about who has access to their data, and even how it is being used, this data brokerage model isn't the model that all companies adopt and it's a really important distinction to make.

While I am here, I will add the following, tech companies who want to democratise democracy (and I'm not saying that's the mission for everyone) and help lower the barrier to entry, cannot claim to do so if they alone decide who has access to these tools. Crucial decisions, such as which parties have access to the latest technology, should not be in the hands of a few tech titans of Silicon Valley - where the power they already wield is already unmeasurable.

All of the above is a fascinating and important debate and also a very American one. Campaigning and political technology is incredibly partisan in America, compared to Europe where what we fear most are monopolies.

It is possible to run into more than enough trouble with data without being a data broker.

because you are a non-partisan software? I agree with the 'getting into trouble piece' I think. I don't see how being non-partisan gets you into more trouble or would increase those chances.

Customers will probably be less upset if something leaks internal to a party during a primary than they would be if something leaked to a different party.

what is the something in this context if not data?

you do not have to be a data vendor to have sensitive data on your servers

I agree with all this. To your point, NationBuilder has been nearly shut out of the Democratic Party at anything above the local level as a result of serving Trump in 2016.

So when Republicans and Democrats walk from the Capitol to their respective fundraising call centers, is your claim that that there is a different software stack in each building to handle the call automation?

I have no idea how to find out whether those tech stacks are indeed different. But if someone knows the answer I'd definitely find it instructive.

AFAIK the fundraising done by actual elected officials is not highly automated, but tools for phone banking, canvassing, and that sort of organizing are definitely partisan (see for example https://act.ngpvan.com/paid-phones on the Dem side).

Probably.

Whenever I've done calling or canvassing for progressive causes or democratic candidates we've used some version of NGP VAN (https://www.ngpvan.com/about).

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some cross-party solutions (especially the closer you get to core infrastructure—I'm sure both parties use AWS).

You are right, in the deepest recesses there is crossover. Stripe, media companies/FB for ad buys, Microsoft Azure, AWS. It is very rare anywhere else.

I would be curious to know if you would expect these companies to be partisan too? And if not, why?

I don't know how strong political beliefs correlate with technical ability, but from my anecdotal evidence, the people I work with are highly competent and not very political.

While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

> While highly political people I know don't seem to work in tech.

I mean, we’re doing anecdata here, but that doesn’t match my experience at all

Thanks for your observation.

Or they just don't talk about it at work, I sure don't.

Because politics is more accessible than the tech industry. Whatever conclusions you are drawing, they are not justified.

for what it's worth, usually people think they are not very political, but that thought itself is quite political.

Even if many people think that they "aren't very political" and are incorrect, there are some people that aren't very political and this is justified. For example, if you are a 5 year old and you believe you are not very political, you are probably correct. If you have been living in the woods for the last 30 years, don't know anything about modern politics, and believe that you are not very political, it would be weird for us to say "the thought you are not political is itself quite political" rather than "that sounds like a justified true belief."

So assuming it's possible in principle to be "not very political," the real question is how disengaged, uninformed, or lacking in understanding do you have to be for your statement to be true in itself, rather than a "quite political" statement. For myself, I think if someone is disengaged enough that they don't care who will become the next president, and there are no local political issues they will argue with someone about, they are "not very political."

You don't think there's anything political about removing yourself from society for 30 years and living in the woods?

> I think if someone is disengaged enough that they don't care who will become the next president, and there are no local political issues they will argue with someone about

What this is saying is that they are happy with the status quo, and they see no room for improvement, or they're not bothered if things are improved one way or another. You can be not interested in politics, but I think doing that is just supporting the current politics.

For many people, just existing is pretty political, like when an entire country has a debate and a vote on whether you should be afforded basic human rights.

> You don't think there's anything political about removing yourself from society for 30 years and living in the woods?

I think there's something political about it, but I also believe that it could be done for non-political reasons (spiritual reasons, practical reasons, mental health reasons). As a pure narrative, it would most likely be politically motivated, but in hypothetical-land it wouldn't necessarily be. Even if there is something "political" about it, it doesn't really map to what people mean when the use the term "political." It may map to opinions about how the state should be governed, the broadest definition of political, but it's much more frequently used to refer to a particular subset of debates which are at least minimally polarizing in some way.

> What this is saying is that they are happy with the status quo, and they see no room for improvement, or they're not bothered if things are improved one way or another.

All I'm trying to point out is that it's a legitimate spectrum. When I say "someone disengaged enough that they don't care who will become the next president" it's very easy for the reader to imagine someone in shoes very like theirs and making that choice somewhat actively to not be engaged.

But in the wide world, you can be simply unable (or unwilling) to devote any energy to understanding how the current political environment relates to your life, and thereby form no opinions one way or the other. Perhaps you work 16 hours a day to support your family, or you live in a country only temporarily and don't even understand the language. This would imply the fact that you lack the resources to form a political opinion is "supporting the status quo."

Support doesn't have to be voluntary, and often isn't. If you are coerced into supporting the status quo, that doesn't mean you aren't supporting it, it just means you lack the freedom to make this decision.

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