ActBlue Isn't Selling Your Data | Hacker News Reader

ActBlue Isn't Selling Your Data

matthodges.com

11 pointsm-hodges8 comments

> When you donate to the campaign of Candidate X through ActBlue, the campaign of Candidate X owns that data. ActBlue provides the data to them, and they are free to use it as they see fit. The campaign of Candidate X is often (but not always!) selling it to other campaigns and electoral organizations.

That's a distinction without a difference. The end result is the same: your data is going to get shared and you'll be hounded to death.

This isn't unique to ActBlue. It's the reality of making any political contribution to anybody. It's why I stopped making political contributions many years ago.

As was written:

> Voters and donors don’t actually care which step in the data chain of custody is to blame for the barrage of irrelevant messages. But those of us who work on Democratic tech infrastructure sure do care.

You're correct that this isn't unique to ActBlue. That's the overarching point. I disagree that it's a distinction without a difference. If you're interested in analyzing, critiquing, and changing the functions and outputs of a complex system, it's important to understand the domains of the pieces of the system. If you search most social media for "ActBlue" you find endless examples of this misunderstanding.

But ActBlue isn’t legally required to share the donor’s email address with the campaigns, are they? They could share the legally required information plus offer a mediated way for candidates to email their own donors through ActBlue, for which unsubscribing would be much more reliable than the current mess, and for which ActBlue could directly act on donor complaints that access to that email channel is being resold to other campaigns.

So, while it’s true that ActBlue isn’t selling data to other campaigns, it’s still enabling that sale without doing what it can to respect donors’ privacy and desire for control over the email inbox.

This is a nuanced contribution to this discussion. While I disagree that, "what if ActBlue was a different SaaS product" is the optimal solution (especially in a market where there are viable alternatives), it at least acknowledges the role one piece of the system plays.

I made I think just one ActBlue donation many years ago, maybe two such donations, and I’ve clicked unsubscribe for every political list that has emailed me since then. I keep getting emails from campaigns I’ve never donated to, new ones every cycle, and so frequently and frenetically that I don’t even check the emails for my ActBlue donor address at all.

If ActBlue doesn’t want at least moral culpability for causing that type of outcome, they should do what they can to stop it in the future, even though everything you wrote in your post is accurate.

The inability to minimize spam resulting from my donations is the one and only reason I don’t donate. I would happily donate if I had a way to limit the responses to a confirmatory thank-you message and nothing else. Even the alumni relations department for the university I attended allowed me to express my contact preferences once years ago, and they’ve respected that ever since. But not US politicians.

By contrast, the one time I made a Canadian political donation - I was then a Canadian permanent resident and am now a US-Canadian dual citizen - I was able to do so over the phone, and including declining to give an email address and requesting not to be contacted or added to mailing lists. Much better. But even there, I would donate more if I were able to do so online without being spammed.

> I disagree that it's a distinction without a difference.

I meant that, to me as a potential donor, it's a distinction without a difference. That my information gets passed on to other entities is what stops me from donating to anybody. I made that mistake once and it took years to (mostly) stop the ensuing assault. I'll never make that mistake again.

Sure, to those people who live and breath this stuff, there is a difference. I'm just not one of those people. The "insiders" in this space should also understand that there are a lot of people who would otherwise donate, but don't because of this problem, and they should figure a way to solve it if they want more money. An organization like ActBlue could be the solution if they wanted to.

This isn't even a political thing -- the same problem occurs with almost all charitable giving. But at least when I make a charitable donation, I can tell them to keep me anonymous and they do (unless they're one of the huge charity businesses). They want me to donate again in the future, after all.

Disclaimer: I'm only namechecking ActBlue because they're the subject at hand. I do not intend to imply that I agree or disagree with their political slant.

Donating to them has been one of my greatest regrets. For months I’ve been playing with the idea of getting a new number because I have found no way to treat the inundation of texts like I do with spam email, but my experience with Google voice has told me no number is completely safe from spam, where every once in a while I get calls collecting debt from the person whose number it used to be.

I am not suggesting it as a solution, but after I made a political donation (not to ActBlue), the onslaught only really stopped after I moved and changed my phone number. I didn't move or change my number because of this, though.

Even now, years later, I still get the occasional spam related to it, but it's little enough to just be background noise.

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