Tulsi v. Google: 1st amended complaint

Friday the Tusli Gabbard campaign filed the expected first amended complaint against Google for suspending her adwords account immediately after the first Democratic debate. A full copy of the complaint is available.

red white and blue election stickers

First reading is that it’s only slightly better written than the first complaint. The document reads to me more like a policy statement than an actual lawsuit. Frankly, I’m about done with presidents and presidential campaigns that think they’re better than or above the rest of us citizens and that normal rules don’t apply to them. But, Tulsi appears to think being a presidential candidate means she gets special access and privileges.

140. Google has established a clear policy of using its power over speech to favor certain political viewpoints over others. For example, since June 2019, Google has used its unique control over political advertising and election speech to try to silence Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential candidate who has spoken out against Google.
141. But Tulsi will not be silenced. Google is trying to change the outcome of an American presidential election, and the government has been unwilling and unable to do anything about it. This action seeks to change that.

She’s also arguing that it’s unfair, so frightfully unfair, that the individuals working in the elections department at Google Ads support other candidates. The underlying implication being that she can only be treated fairly if her account manager is also a supporter of hers. I see this as a symptom of the incredibly polarised world we live in. Tulsi can’t believe anyone would treat her fairly unless they also support her for president.

My naive reading of the initial and first amended complaints leads me to believe that on the night of the first debate, the campaign tried to purchase a lot more ads than they had previously. This sudden increase in purchasing activity triggered some of Google’s anti-fraud detection algorithms and her adwords account was shut down temporarily. If I didn’t say it when I wrote about the first complaint, I’ll say it now: This is good behaviour. If something significant changes on an account, particularly a verified account belonging to a presidential candidate, then it should be shut down until the activity is verified.

I’ve heard some comments from friends and colleagues who are Google employees about the Podesta phish / DNC hack in the run up to the 2016 election. These comments, while vague and containing no details, lead me to think there was a significant internal push to make sure that Google would catch such types of compromises in the future.

Plus, I’m sure Google has limits on adwords account to make sure their customers aren’t surprised by excessive charges. Even verified accounts and even political accounts. The last thing they want is to hear is that the adwords bill won’t be paid because the charges weren’t authorised.

Then there’s this:
154. An actual controversy exists between the Campaign and Google as to whether Google’s policies and procedures, and their application thereof, violate the United States Constitution. The correct interpretation is that Google’s policies and procedures, facially and as applied, violate the Campaign’s speech and association rights under the United States Constitution

As long as I’ve been on the internet folks have been trying to argue that the first Amendment of the US constitution applies to private networks. I have yet to see any compelling argument that says it does. While there are bigger discussions to be had about the responsibilities of large internet providers, I don’t think they can or should be based on the first amendment.

I do think networks have a fundamental responsibility to stop abuse on their platform. All of the major networks, and many of the minor ones, have failed spectacularly at doing this. Just this weekend a Facebook friend shared this NYTimes article on the explosion of child sexual abuse material online (CW: child abuse and torture, this is a very difficult read) and how law enforcement and networks have utterly failed to effectively address the issue. There are days I think the Internet has contributed to more harm than good. Reading that article led to one of those days.

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I cannot feel the Bern.

On a lark (and to do my best to stay as informed as possible via primary sources) I decided to sign up for the official mailing lists of the Trump, Clinton, and Sanders campaigns.
Both Trump and Clinton were happy to take my email address and add it to their distribution lists, no confirmation required. Not terribly surprising, since they need to make it as easy as possible to get their messages out to anyone who will listen.
On to the Sanders campaign.
I… couldn’t figure out how to subscribe to Sanders’ mailing list.
I feel I must have missed something obvious. I’m certainly not saying that I’m a super-genius or anything… but, at the same time, if I can’t figure out how to get your mail, then it might just be that others are having similar problems.
The first obvious place to sign up for updates was the big blue “This is your movement” box. That route requires a donation to proceed. Back to the main page.
The next option would sign me up for mobile alerts. No thanks.
All the way at the bottom of the page, a final big blue box asks, “Are you ready?” Somewhat beyond ready, I entered my information, clicked “Join us” and held my breath.
I Cannot Feel the Bern
The “Form submission limit reached” error is likely indicative of the use of outsourced product or service being used to collect and manage contact information on behalf of the campaign. My actually seeing this error is indicative of insufficient testing of the site by the campaign.
I’m sure the developer promised a bulletproof site, and it seems the campaign took this on faith. But at least one thing fell through cracks, resulting in the campaign not just losing an avenue of communication with someone who has self-selected as interested, but also potentially diminishing that person’s opinion of how the campaign manages the finer points, and wondering how that ultimately reflects on the candidate. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether or not the campaign developed the site themselves or hired someone else to do it on their behalf. All that matters is that they put their name on it, and let it speak for their brand.
Campaigning is sales. Whether you’re selling a candidate or a stock portfolio or a hand-made product, when you invite your audience to interact with you online, they must find the experience to have been worth their time, otherwise they’re unlikely to take you up on any future invitations. In business, as in politics, there’s a lot on the line, communication is vital, and mastering digital interaction with the public is no longer optional.
And while I was writing this post, I started receiving mail from the Sanders’ campaign. So I guess I could subscribe after all.

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Bad data drives delivery problems

It’s a wild election season here in the US. In the past few presidential elections, email has played a bigger and bigger role in messaging and fundraising. President Obama’s campaign used email effectively, but sent  huge volumes. In fact, the volume was so heavy, it led to a joke on the Daily Show.

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Politician sends spam, experiences consequences, news at 11

Over the weekend I’ve been seeing a number of over the top, hyperbolic blog posts about the Trump Campaign’s agency getting suspended from their ESP for spamming. Adestra suspended the Donald Trump campaign for “for committing some of the most egregious spamming in the history of the Internet in an effort to save his broke campaign.”
That quote about “most egregious spamming” is from some partisan website that is all about making Trump look bad.  I did actually laugh out loud reading most egregious. Let’s be real here. This incidence of spamming doesn’t even make it into the top 100 of the ones I know about. And it’s not like I’m particularly well up on who’s spamming what.
This really is business as usual in the email space and particularly the political email space. Political sender, be they special interest groups or politicians, are sloppy with permission and will send mail to any email address they get their hands on. I talked about this last week: Spam Filtering is Apolitical
spamVote
The Trump campaign isn’t the first political campaign to send spam.  It wasn’t huge news in 2012, but the Romney campaign was doing some bad stuff with their email marketing. They were working with snowshoe spammers. They were listed on the SBL. They got cut off by their ESP.
While Spamhaus doesn’t keep historic records, I found a post from 2012 on the “Mainsleaze” about the Romney campaign / supporters and their use of spam as a campaign tactic. In the comments on that post a representative of Spamhaus says, “Entirely too many political operatives and some of those who work with them at ESPs feel entitled to ignore the usual rules and send opt-out bulk email to anybody they wish.” This is true, and something I’ve repeatedly mentioned on this blog.

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