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Comment by MiddleEndian | Hacker News Reader

>Facebook and others keep that in mind as you relentlessly monetize without offering value to people.

Pretty much all of my communication on Facebook Messenger is with my friends, and the rest is with some groups I'm in to find local events, which I could leave hassle-free at any time with the click of a button. No communication with spammers or businesses, with the exception of someone with an obviously hacked account once every few years.

With the rare exception, my incoming calls on my phone are either my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone), or spammers (who I don't answer).

So I would say Facebook keeps this in mind much better than the phone company.

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> my doorbell (which I answer if I'm expecting someone)

My would you not answer if you don't expect someone? Pranks? Sellers? I have never experienced any door knockers that are obnoxious, except one seller once. Mostly it is friends, neighbours or missionaries who are unannounced.

Depends on the neighbourhood. I moved recently and now a salesman or charity is a 3-4x a week occurrence for me. I also get a bunch of teens selling various goods that I'm 90% sure are stolen, in order to raise money for their education.

Not the OP, but, I once fought off a robbery with a fencing hammer, that started that way. Maybe look for balaclavas before you open the door.

Who doesn't look for balaclavas before they open the door?

Not always in the mood for a snack.

"Honey, I'm home"

It’s my time. I will regularly just not answer the door even if they’re looking right at me through the bay window.

Door to door solicitation is obnoxious even if the people are polite, IMO.

Does solicitation include political lobbying?

Yes

Solicitation is the act of offering, or attempting to purchase, goods and/or services.

Can you explain how talking to my neighbors about important social issues falls under that criteria?

No, because if you're going to try and start that conversation I'm not going to answer the door. ;)

You sound like a pleasant person to be around. /s

A neighbor talking to their neighbors about actual important political issues isn’t typically what people don’t like.

People they don’t know trying to convince them they should care about a political issue they don’t care about or they are terrible and bad people is what people don’t like. It’s usually the second one, even if someone thinks it’s the first one.

So you only want to talk to neighbors you already know? Isn't that a bit insular?

I think if you want to live in a community, you have to be open to having conversations with your coinhabitants about polemic issues. Anything less is unkind.

Regardless, persistent lobbying from a stranger is no more solicitation than softer lobbying from a friend.

In practice, this is rarely a problem. The civically inactive tend to congregate; communities with a strong civic sense, on the other hand, understand why organization is important. (TL; DR If you get mad about neighbors, including those you don't know, trying to talk to you about issues, you're the root cause of what you might complain about your community.)

Nice try. I’d say this manipulative BS is the real root cause.

People in battleground areas often have buses of activists brought in from neighboring states to do door to door canvassing. Among other things.

Thanks for calling everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community or reputation to worry about first ‘the root of the problem’ though.

If by battleground areas you mean swing states, then the national popular vote could reduce that cross-state migration and canvassing that we see so much of.

Still, does someone in Georgia not have a stake in whether Florida lines their roads with radioactive agricultural waste? In our industrialized, globalized economy stakes reach much farther than a neighborhood or city level.

Claiming that any discussion of that sort is ‘friendly neighborhood discussion’ is the height of disingenuous bullshit. Which is my point.

> Claiming that any discussion of that sort is ‘friendly neighborhood discussion’

Bit of a straw man to quote something nobody in this thread said.

Nobody said civic duty is champagne and French fries. Just that rejecting it has a cost, and the people who cause that cost have a tendency to congregate. That, in turn, frees up resources for the communities who bother organizing.

Someone literally equated folks from other states as having similar stakes as actual neighbors. This isn’t strawmanning.

And you’re the one that keeps beating ‘civic duty’ when I’m pointing out the disingenuous and manipulative nature of a lot of the current political strategies - including fake grass roots ‘neighbors’.

Which people have a right to ignore, despite your statements otherwise.

Personally, I’d argue they have an actual civic duty to ignore or even ostracize folks doing that, as that kind of manipulative lying is what poisons actual civic discussion.

> People in battleground areas often have buses of activists brought in from neighboring states to do door to door canvassing

These aren't neighbors. We're talking about neighbors.

> everyone who wants to be able to cast their vote without active harassment from people with no stake in their community

Your neighbors have a stake in your community. It's almost part and parcel with the definition. Refusing to engage with them because you assume to know better obviously impacts the community's strength, cohesiveness and civic integrity.

People recognize their neighbors.

I'd be willing to make a carve out for the candidates themselves or entirely uncompensated volunteers.

Campaign staff are not welcome.

Does it include religious preaching?

That would be an interesting case in the US. A country deeply steeped in God.

Sure, but not in the same league compared to sellers calling over the phone in my experience.

I guess it comes down to the effective wanna answer the door to not wanna answer the door ratio. I don't want to miss someone I'd like to meet to avoid the 1/X chance of a seller. As sibling comment noted that ratio probably depends on local circumstances.

Someone in person is a lot harder to ignore if they get pushy.

As is website to website solicitation

Even before I had door cameras, I would just not answer the door if I wasn't expecting someone. Everyone I know would know enough to call or text before coming over, and anyone in an emergency would keep knocking.

I've had plenty of obnoxious salespeople and other solicitors, especially religious ones. They even have the nerve to claim that they aren't soliciting because they're not selling anything for money. And none of them have the good sense to accept that they're bothering someone that is obviously not happy that their door was knocked on.

Unless I'm already in a really bad mood, I generally start off nice, but I turn serious as soon as they refuse to take the first 'no'. Except for the ones I argue with for a while to waste their time and energy.

Friends and neighbors are the primary people I don’t answer the door for.

If I'm not expecting someone to ring my doorbell (or call me on the phone, which is certainly rarer), my phone is on silent. So I simply wouldn't notice unless I happen to be looking at my phone.

I have my other communication (mostly FB Messenger, but also Discord and SMS/MMS) set up to work on my computer, so I rarely look at my phone at home.

Also I live in a condo, nobody can really "knock on my door" unless it's someone who lives in my building, in which case I'll answer.

I don't answer the door unless the caller knocks more than once. If it's only one knock, I assume it's someone dropping off a package or asking for money, which accounts for about 95% of cases. If I do answer the door, I'm almost never glad I did, though. My neighbors have my number, and generally text me before coming over.

My thought is that you knocking on my door does not oblige me to stop what I'm doing and answer it, any more than someone saying, "sir, do you have a minute for..." while I'm walking down the street obliges me to stop and hear their sales pitch, or seeing an unknown caller on the phone means I ought to pick it up.

This could deteriorate at any point. Facebook owes you nothing.

Sure, I don't think Facebook is benevolent. I hear Whatsapp (also owned by Facebook) has plenty of spam, and I don't use that, much to the dismay of some of my non-American friends.

The phone companies also owe me nothing, and they provide a worse experience and will likely continue to do so unless forced by the FCC (which seems to be getting better lately).

I do use SMS/MMS but forwarded to my web browser so I don't have to look at my phone.

At the moment, Messenger is better for both text and voice/video calls. If that changes, my friends and I will adapt.

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