Site that lets you record and automatically phone-blast SOPA supporters for you
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Legislators are already not paying attention to email, because so much of it is automated. At best, some legislators tally email, many of them don't pay attention to it at all.
Automating phone calls is an inevitable continuation. Right now, phone calls have _some_ impact. Unfortunately, technology will make calling less effective.
On one end we have software, on the other we have the poor Congressional staffers who have to pick up the phone every time it rings. Eventually the staff will become numb to phone calls, stop paying attention, and turn to people sitting in their offices for guidance (lobbyists, who get paid to be there, or, less likely, people like you and me who find the time to actually go and talk to them.)
We have a disconnect between taking the smallest step (sending an email, calling) and the next one, physically going somewhere. This is why we -- we the tech industry, in partnership with visionaries from the non-profit space -- have to reinvent activism. To make the transition from the online to the offline world smoother. And to make the time spent online more meaningful.
Increasingly, people look online first. The dozens of petition sites -- Change.org is a full social network type of deal -- are making it easy to confuse "doing something" with "doing something effective."
No, activism is effective (see: GoDaddy, Arab Spring, Montgomery Bus Boycott), but it's hard and takes real work. It's the political system that needs to be fixed. Those lobbyists should not be out in the lobby. The fact that they have more clout because they are right there is the major problem. Saying we need to get boots on the ground so we can compete with lobbyists is to miss the core problem that we shouldn't need to compete with lobbyists. We should be able to email, call or walk into an office and have our voice heard. Our vote should matter more than money.
In the meantime, yes, we need to be active enough to change the political system, but changing activism should only lead to the larger goal of changing the fact that activism shouldn't need to be changed.
One of these things is not like the others.
Please don't tell me that changing your hosting is comparable. Besides, we don't know that the GoDaddy boycotting has had any effect on SOPA (as opposed to GoDaddy).
When I say reinvented, I mean that we need innovative ways to use technology in the advocacy space. Like you said, activism takes real work. Clicking "Like" on FB is giving people the false impression that they have actually done something.
Where we agree is that the political system is broken and that it is a much more important issue.
I've been fighting for a particular bill for nearly a decade (see my profile, if you care to know) and the thing that I've heard consistently, regardless of what season or year it is, regardless of who controls Congress, regardless of who is the President, is this: "now is not a good time to make the push, because the election is coming up." If there is ANY election in the next two years, Congress simply STOPS. In other words they are in a perpetual election cycle.
We make the push anyway, we inch closer, but fail (always due to filibuster and votes splitting evenly along party lines, regardless of actual stance of specific legislators), then we spend YEARS in the election cycle. I've seen this happen too many times...
I'm starting to think that all progressive organizations should drop their pet issues and focus on campaign financing reform first.
We certainly agree on that point. I believe publicly financed campaigns and term limits will bring the United States greater change than any other two policy changes can.
That said, I don't think slactivism is really a change per se. It's hard to believe that people who click the "Like" button on Facebook would be out picketing or writing their congressman on any issue. What you could argue is that it at least forces them to consider a position that they might again consider when they are standing in the ballot box.
If anything, it'll probably make it more difficult for actual people trying to talk to their representatives to be heard.
On the other hand, at the very least, it will give them a sense of the volume of those willing to do something like this in opposition to SOPA, even if they don't listen to it completely.
Second, staff talks to each other all the time (they work in a bullpen like setting) so they are always aware of the issues that are reaching the office, especially if it happens in volumes. Interns report these calls to their managers, especially since they have to ask for instructions on how to deal with them.
Finally, any staff member worth her salt will write a memo to the principal to inform them of such campaigns.
...is a hell of a lot better than "no mention at all about that entertainment lobbyist's bill I rubber-stamped and then never heard anything about. Must not have been important."
So the congressperson isn't losing any calls they needed to take and the only person being punished is their secretary. In the worse case scenario that congressperson could have a bunch of constituents who object to SOPA and you'd be blocking those calls with your own (which the congressman couldn't care less about if you aren't in their district)
http://www.reverserobocall.com/products/sopa-and-pipa-propon...
Name one.
"SOPA isn't the only target of Reverse Robocall, and it's not an issue that the site specifically takes a stand on. In an interview with Ars, Dakin said that the site is a non-partisan, for-profit effort aimed at providing a service for advocacy groups, in the same vein as the petition site Change.org. But the service, launched in beta just before Thanksgiving, is also an outgrowth of Dakin and Titus' work as privacy advocates to work against robocalls by politicians, he said."
Why not take a stand on it, rather then just worrying about your bottom line.