Causes Acquires Votizen To Democratize Democracy | Hacker News Reader

Causes Acquires Votizen To Democratize Democracy

techcrunch.com

49 pointsmassarog23 comments

I have a friend that works at Causes and after catching up with him in San Fran for some drinks I was amazed at the level of impact they have. The Sandy Hook Sympathy card, which harnessed the power of their platform was quick-to-action and has captured 2,536,431 signatures so far.

While Sandy Hook was a tragedy, it proves the reach that Causes has and can definitely help be a launch pad for the tumultuous future in politics in America and around the world.

Turning the capture of attention that Causes has into a source of political candidate data and actionable metrics for their audience seems like a critical step into turning angry online voices into voter turn-out. Using social networking which takes less money and time to spread a message is one of the best utilizations of our technology that I've seen so far, and definitely far nobler (Sorry, FarmVille).

Great job guys, and its great to see startups coming out of San Fran that are a little less frivolous and a little more impactful on what could be a very dim future for democracy. Take the wind out of the SuperPACs!

Interesting to note that DemandAPlan had gotten 80k or so signatures on a similar call to action, but when the tech community got involved in pushing the Sandy Hook card, it really took off.

Hey all, I was an early eng at Votizen, now coming up to speed w/ Causes. I'm happy to answer any questions you have.

Curious how privacy will be handled; I guess the info on my votizen profile is all technically public record, but I'd really prefer opt-in for all merging.

Also curious how "multiple groups who conflict" will be handled. On Votizen, there was already D vs. R (with a lot more D...), but my experience with causes is that it was mainly pro-things, where no one was really anti that thing, just maybe "don't feel it's the most important thing to do".

According to their note, all personal data records will be destroyed: https://www.facebook.com/notes/votizen/votizen-and-causes-ar...

Everything I read from the article makes it sound like you guys are a non-profit or at least run it as such?

Do you guys have plans or expect this company to ever monetize?

Both Causes and Votizen are venture-backed companies, definitely expecting to make revenue.

I've heard this confusion consistently from people, so I get where you're coming from. It is possible to have a for-profit business whose customer is the non-profit, or the campaign, or the NGO.

[Former Causes employee]

I always liked the term not-just-for-profit.

Congrats on the merge, guys!

Echoing Kristjan and Jeremy's sentiments here.

It's a very fine line to walk in finding the intersection of public good through individual empowerment and corporate sustainability through partnerships with CSRs and non-profits. And then there's the challenge of doing this in a way that doesn't breach user trust and privacy in data.

No one doubts our heart's been in the right place but what's exciting now is proving out that our business acumen's in the right place too.

Votizen monetized early on by selling its services to campaigns to discover new voters and drive them to the polls through peer-to-peer contact: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/14/votizen-launches-virtual-pr...

Probably way outside any NDA you might have, but I've been kicking around ways to introduce more statistics and data analysis to the governing process itself. Are you guys looking to move beyond the election cycle into the actual lawmaking process?

You might take a look at this: https://makeyourlaws.org/

This is a thing I want personally. Most recently the excitement and focus on Sandy Hook has frustrated me. 1 Sandy Hook occurs every day in the United States. We just shrug off the sad local news story and continue eating dinner. The fact that there is sudden interest in discussing gun policy is great. The fact that the discussion is so badly informed is not great.

I can tell you that I will work inside Causes to make it a thing we do.

EDIT: to be clear, I don't mean informed gun policy, I mean informed policy in general. Gun policy is just a recent example.

>Most recently the excitement and focus on Sandy Hook has frustrated me. 1 Sandy Hook occurs every day in the United States.

Dude, no. "An act of gun violence" is not "20 elementary school children killed in their elementary school." There is not 1 Sandy Hook every day. It is the Olympics of moral equivocation to boil what happened there to "an act of gun violence." Why would you be frustrated that people got more worked up over 20 little kids being murdered in their classrooms than other "acts of gun violence"?

30 people per day are killed with guns in the US. Some of those people are kids. Probably less than 20 kids per day, you're right.

I do not hold a child's life higher than an adult's. I realize that's a weird thing to lots of people. Maybe that's weird to you?

Anyway, I do agree that a single actor causing all that harm is a different thing, yes. We should fix that. I just hate that we ignore ongoing disasters because it doesn't make a good news story.

EDIT: I didn't downvote Matt and don't think people should. Don't downvote things you disagree with. His is a valid response and this is a place for discussion (right)?

This is exactly what I've been thinking. I'd love to track the statistical outcomes of legislation in a way that's meaningful to both the public and politicians. I know some non-profits do similar stuff in some areas, but I'd like to turn data into a real tool for politics.

We're hiring. jeremy at causes.com

Is that really a good idea? To enable Facebook to know who you are voting for?

Causes is not Facebook.

I think the OP might have meant that more in the sense of a social network / public internet site.

Ah, well for sure your privacy decisions are your business. I personally am careful what I choose to share. If you feel that sharing your political views is dangerous or damaging or what-have-you, that is your choice, but you are also removing yourself from an important (personally, morally, globally) discussion.

Congrats to the Votizen team! Great group of engineers who have contributed a great deal to Django and Python.

Thanks, Matt. :)

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