Apple, Google, Verizon, and Others Join Fight Against Robocalls

The Federal Government is stepping up efforts to protect consumers from robocalls, those unsolicited telephone calls that use computerized auto-dialers to deliver prerecorded messages. This summer, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) convened the first meeting of the Robo call Strike Force, a collection of phone hardware and software manufacturers and carriers banding together to tackle robocalls, which generate more than 200,000 consumer complaints to the FCC each year. More than 30 industry notables, including AT&T, Apple, Google, Verizon, and Comcast, have joined the organization, which pledges to foster greater adoption of call-blocking technologies and standards. The group will also look to end “spoofing,” a technique whereby companies placing robocalls deliberately falsify the telephone number and/or name relayed to caller ID systems to trick consumers into answering the calls and to skirt a number of consumer protections already in place.

“We know there is a problem. We know how much consumers dislike these calls,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn said in a statement. “We know the public is frustrated because they assumed that after they registered for the ‘Do Not Call’ list, this would stop. It did not, so now is the time to take some real action.”

Companies like Nomorobo, Primus Telecommunications, and even Apple and Google have already created technology to block robocalls, and at least two bills have been introduced in Congress to make the technology more widely available to consumers and telephone service providers. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler sent a letter in July to the leading phone carriers, urging them to make the technology available to consumers at no cost.

Additionally, Congress is considering rewriting the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law passed in 1991 to restrict telephone solicitations and the use of automated telephone equipment for marketing and consumer outreach. Many have called that law outdated.

Current Legislation does allow some prerecorded messages that are purely informational, such as when a flight’s been canceled or a school opening has been delayed because of snow. Other allowed calls include appointment or prescription refill reminders, political calls, and prerecorded messages from banks, debt collectors, telephone carriers, and charities, provided these organizations make the calls themselves and do not promote the sale of any goods or services.

Still, despite existing legal protections, American consumers are subjected to billions of robocalls every month, largely because of how cheap and easy they are to make. Roughly 2.4 million robocalls are placed to U.S. consumers every month, according to the YouMail Robocall Index.

Besides annoying consumers, the greater scourge is that robocalls are often tied to criminal activity that seeks to extract personal information from consumers.

Though robocalls are used mostly by unscrupulous marketers and overseas companies looking to prey on American consumers, some legitimate businesses have been caught up in Litigation over even basic automated messages. Within the past year, Facebook, Yahoo, and AOL, for example, have been sued over text messages they sent to welcome new accounts.

And Jeff Kagan, a Telecommunications Industry Analyst, sees it only getting worse. “This is a bad situation both for people who get robocalls and for the good companies who use telemarketing,” he says. “The laws may very well be tightened, but that won’t solve the problems. It will only stop the good guys. The bad guys’ calls will still come to us from overseas using the Internet and VoIP.” Robocalling, Kagan adds, has given the entire telemarketing industry a black eye. “I don’t think we would dislike telemarketing so much if it weren’t for all the bad calls mixed in with the few good calls,” he says. “The bad guys have ruined it for the good companies once again.”

Kagan also calls into question any impact the new laws might have. “The problem is the U.S. has no power over the bad guys since they come from overseas,” he says. “The damage caused by the bad guys spoiling this fertile ground is much worse than any regulation.”











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Social Media Use in 2016 Presidential Election

Tech firms are courting campaigns ahead of the 2016 Presidential election, where budgets for digital advertising are expected to reach new highs.

The election will be tweeted, googled, snapped, liked on Facebook, and shared on numerous other social media platforms. And Silicon Valley is hoping to turn that engagement into big profits.

While billions will be spent on political advertising over the next year, television remains the prime mover and budgets for digital ads trail traditional media.

But even by one recent estimate from Borrell Associates, 9.5 percent of political media budgets could go towards digital media, a total of $1 billion.

Observers predict platforms like Facebook will remain dominant in 2016 with a user base that makes up nearly three quarters of online adults in the United States. And search advertising will remain key.

Insurgent companies like Snapchat though are catching advertising buzz with offerings geared specifically to young people.

Here’s a rundown of how digital firms hope to bring in ad dollars from both sides of the aisle, up and down the ballot.

FACEBOOK
One factor makes Facebook distinctive in the race for political ad dollars: its massive audience. The company says it can offer campaigns the ability to reach a broad swath of the American public, around 190 million people in the country use the platform every month, and hone in on particular groups of voters. Campaigns can upload their voter data directly into Facebook’s platform and use the company’s features to target their ads. Operatives can target ads to potential voters who are interested in certain issues, like gun control or the economy, or based on demographic characteristics. Facebook has a robust set of data about its users. Users tell the platform about their likes and dislikes and are controversially required by the social network to keep the name they “use in real life.” The company’s growing video business also extends to politics. Over four billion video views the service gets every day. Facebook is taking the political ad market seriously, with a team of roughly 10 people working to sell ads to national and statewide campaigns and more employees working on smaller races.

GOOGLE
Google has an election team of 10 to 12 who are pushing Presidential campaigns to adopt the advertising tools that made the search engine a multi-billion dollar powerhouse. These include the three traditional drivers of its advertising revenue, sponsored links in Google searches, YouTube video advertising and so-called programmatic advertising, where the tech company provides ads to millions of online publishers like The New York Times or HGTV that can be targeted for specific content.
Lee Dunn, Google’s head of elections, said this cycle more campaigns are coming with their own data about specific voting groups and working with Google to determine which websites would be the best place to target them. Especially in the early stages of the campaign, Dunn said Google's search advertising is key when voters are still learning about a candidate and looking for information online. For example, the first link in a search for “Hillary Clinton” is a sponsored link to her website and links to pages where you can volunteer, donate or help “fight GOP attacks.” Google’s search ads are an open market subject to auction, meaning no candidate is guaranteed to win ad placement for their name. On YouTube, candidates can use ads to target demographics including age, gender, location and interest. Dunn said specific ads can target users who might speak a different language, such as Spanish.

TWITTER
Twitter has positioned itself as the destination for campaigns looking to engage in real time, a reputation bolstered by the numerous political operatives and reporters who use the platform obsessively. The company pitched political strategists and advertisers on the platform in July during a breakfast event at The Hamilton restaurant in Washington. There, attendees heard from company executives, two members of Congress and strategists about how Twitter has proved useful to campaigns in the past. Guests also took home socks emblazoned with Twitter’s distinctive bird logo. The primary vehicle for advertising on Twitter is through promoted tweets, or messages that a campaign or company pays to place in the feeds of certain users. Campaigns can also pay to promote hashtags. They can also direct those messages at specific audiences using targeting features. Strategists can aim their ads at people within a certain town or use their own lists or website data to build an audience for promoted tweets. The company also offers the ability to target users in real-time who are talking about a specific event. Twitter said that several campaigns used that feature during the first Republican primary debate. Sometimes, the target audience isn’t even voters. Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) chief digital strategist said at Twitter’s event in July that the campaign will sometimes target promoted tweets at specific reporters in order to get the campaign’s message across. At the event, he said that “reaching influencers' on Twitter is why it’s so powerful."

SNAPCHAT
Snapchat is still in its advertising infancy compared to more established social media companies and 2016 will be the first election cycle to test out political ads on the platform. Snapchat is pitching its video ads, no longer than 10 seconds, as more analogous to traditional TV and targeted at young voters who have cut the cord. The company says its ads are geared towards persuading voters to align with a candidate. One criticism is that its videos, unlike some digital ads, do now allow people to click through to reach a candidate's website where they would be encouraged to donate or volunteer. Besides video ads, candidates can also purchase filters touting their campaign, which users can add to their photos and videos. The company recently hired Rob Saliterman to lead political ad sales. He previously helped lead the politics team at Google and served in the George W. Bush administration. Snapchat ads are so new, and rare, at this point, that they tend to make news. An outside group supporting Rand Paul was credited in June for producing the first Snapchat ad for a presidential candidate. Scott Walker and John Kasich became the first candidates to run ads, which they inserted into a live story in July about Iowa campaign stops. Snapchat touts nearly 100 million people using the platform daily, a sizable number, but one dwarfed by Facebook's 1 billion daily users. And campaigns are limited in who they can target on the platform. Snapchat is almost exclusively used by people under the age of 34, and more than a quarter of users are younger than 18 and ineligible to vote.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker

Voting Information Project

Voting Information Project makes official data available wherever voters look for it - online.

In 2008, The Pew Charitable Trusts and Google realized voters were having trouble finding accurate voting information. Millions of people were looking for answers to three main questions:

- Where do I vote?
- What’s on my ballot?
- How do I navigate the election process

But no standardized, reliable, and official source for this information existed.

Pew partnered with Google and the states to address the issue by creating the Voting Information Project (VIP). Pew works on VIP with state election officials to develop cutting-edge solutions to standardize and publish the data, and Google and other partners have ensured that voters find data where they’re looking for it most, online.

During the 2014 general election, official information provided by VIP was accessed an estimated 31 million times from a variety of sources, including:

- Google products, such as Search
- Customized tools on the websites of national organizations such as the Republican National Committee, the Democratic National Committee, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Rock the Vote, and the League of Women Voters
- On one of over 1,500 websites that housed VIP’s white-label voting information tool.

Additionally, Pew, in collaboration with The Internet Association and technology companies like Facebook, Foursquare, Google, and Twitter created the website Get to the Polls that saw approximately 8 million total page views, most on Election Day.

In addition to serving voters, VIP is also committed to providing state and local election officials with the resources they need to deliver important voting information to their constituents. To this end, VIP offers several free, open-source tools and apps that election officials can use to reach their voters:

The Voting Information Tool is an easily embeddable, mobile-optimized, white-label tool that provides official voting information–such as polling place and ballot information–to anyone using just a residential address. It is available in 10 languages. During the 2014 general election, the tool was embedded on the official state website in the following states: California, Iowa, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Virginia.

White-label iOS and Android apps that can be customized, branded, and released by state and local governments, or third-party organizations. Kansas was the first state to brand and release an iOS version of the app "VoteKansas" as its own.

Connecticut and North Carolina have also released their own branded versions. The apps are available in Spanish and English.

A short messaging service (SMS) tool will provide voters with election information via text message in 10 languages. By texting “VOTE” to GOVOTE (468683), voters can find polling places, contact information for local election officials, and registration URLs. This nationwide number, live later this year, will be available for state and local election officials to promote for users without a smartphone or internet access.

Throughout 2015, VIP is building a first-of-its kind Data Management Suite to collect, standardize, validate, and publish official election data. When complete, the Data Management Suite will process data formatted to match VIP’s 3.0 Specification and validate it against a set of criteria that rigorously tests for errors, from structural to geographical accuracy. This process is illustrated in an infographic recently released by Pew that visualizes the process of delivering data from a state to VIP.

As VIP builds out its Data Management Suite, it is simultaneously working to expand the scope of elections it supports. In 2015 VIP will cover over 60 elections, including municipal and down ballot races in several states. The project’s goal is to be “always on” in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, ensuring that if there is an election happening anywhere, voters can easily access the information they need to participate. With the pending release of its new system and its efforts to provide data for local elections, VIP is one of the most comprehensive sources for official election information across the county.

VIP relies on its state partnerships to improve the quality and availability of election data. Any election official interested in learning more about the project, or in assistance from VIP, can reach the team at vip@pewtrusts.org.

CLICK HERE to view the Voting Information Project Data Flow.


CLICK HERE to view the VIP Format Specification Version 3.0.











NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker