Subject: DNC Tech Clips
From: Andrew Brown <[email-masked]>
To: TechClips <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 14:50:51 -0700

TECH CLIPS
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Why Campaigns and Advocacy Still Need Disrupting<https://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/why-campaigns-and-advocacy-still-need-disrupting>
Andy Amsler // Campaigns and Elections
The New York Times has already dubbed Hillary Clinton’s campaign the “ultimate” startup. And there is no shortage of articles, like this one from Fast Company, drawing a line between President Obama’s campaign apparatus and the “lean startup” model.
The comparison, of course, has its merits. Startups and presidential campaigns raise and spend money at an aggressive clip. They scale and grow exponentially. They build a culture where young and fresh minds can thrive, and they share a bias for data and testing. At their core, campaigns are entrepreneurial and innovative, just like startups.
But here’s where the two diverge: while the greatest startups in the world go on to release newer, better products year after year, much of the R&D that is poured into a presidential campaign is lost after Election Day, wiped away virtually overnight.

Facebook is going to get more politically biased, not less<http://www.vox.com/2016/5/13/11661156/facebook-political-bias>
Ezra Klein // VOX
Gizmodo's report that Facebook's "trending" box was curated by a liberal-leaning staff that suppressed stories from conservative outlets hit like a bomb. The revelation has been greeted with outrage, and rightly so: "Trending" shouldn't be an ideological concept.
The furor grew loud enough that Mark Zuckerberg has now responded. "In the coming weeks," he promised, "I'll also be inviting leading conservatives and people from across the political spectrum to talk with me about this and share their points of view. I want to have a direct conversation."
The CEO's attention to the problem of biased curators should be enough to solve it. But here's the truth: Facebook — at least as people really experience it — is likely to get more biased, not less, as a result of this controversy.

Conservative figures to meet with Mark Zuckerberg<http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/05/facebook-zuckerberg-conservatives-glenn-beck-223200>
Hadas Gold // Politico
Conservative media figures will meet Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg this week at Facebook headquarters in California.
The group will include TV and radio host Glenn Beck, RedState, Twitchy, Townhall and HotAir General Manager Jonathan Garthwaite, Mitt Romney's former digital director Zac Moffat, and Republican pollster and Washington Examiner columnist Kristen Soltis Anderson. Donald Trump adviser Barry Bennett, Fox News' Dana Perino and CNN's S.E. Cupp are also attending, according to CNN.

Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election<http://www.wired.com/2016/05/twitterbots-2/>
Samuel Woolley and Ben Howard // Wired
Donald Trump understands minority communities. Just ask Pepe Luis Lopez, Francisco Palma, and Alberto Contreras. These guys are among the candidate’s 7 million Twitter followers, and each tweeted in support of Trump after his victory in the Nevada caucuses earlier this year. The problem is, Pepe, Francisco, and Alberto aren’t people. They’re bots—spam accounts that post autonomously using programmed scripts.
Trump’s rhetoric has alienated much of the Latino electorate, a fast-growing voting community. And while it’s unclear who’s behind the accounts of Pepe and his digital pals, their tweets succeed in impersonating Latino voters at a time when the real estate mogul needs them most.

Bots and Fraudsters are Feasting on Political Ad Dollars<http://adexchanger.com/featured-2/bots-and-fraudsters-are-feasting-on-political-ad-dollars/>
James Hercher // AdExchanger
Blood in the water brings sharks, and high CPMs bring bots.
And political spenders, who often outbid brands on targeted inventory, are uniquely vulnerable to digital fraud and bots.
“All the ingredients that typically happen for fraud are a part of the political marketplace,” said Mark Schlosser, senior sales director at the ad fraud security firm White Ops, who’s building out the firm’s political business.
Hallmarks of both fraud and political advertising include money being suddenly dumped into specific publishers on short flight campaigns, lots of first-party profile data and cookie-based targeting, according to Schlosser.

Donald Trump Plans to Campaign Like It’s 1989<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/donald-trump-plans-to-campaign-like-its-1899.html>
Ed Kilgore // New York Magazine
Donald Trump utters so much self-conscious b.s. about his campaign that you initially don't know how seriously to take things like this<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/trump-is-never-going-to-let-you-see-his-taxes.html>:
“Trump has no plans to invest in the kind of data-driven voter-targeting operation that powered Obama's two White House wins and that Mitt Romney tried to emulate in 2012.
"I've always felt it was overrated," Trump told the AP. "Obama got the votes much more so than his data processing machine. And I think the same is true with me."
Instead, Trump will rely on a large rally-based get-out-the-vote effort.”
Maybe he's just jiving us, but the idea of a data-free general-election campaign, horrifying as it must be to Republican professionals, is entirely consistent with everything else we know about Trump's idea of campaigning.

The Emerging Trump Republican Voter Profile<http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/275786/the-emerging-trump-republican-voter-profile.html>
Philip Rosenstein // MediaPost
As the Grand Old Party rips open at the seams, political marketers are taking a closer look at an emerging demographic group within the Republican party — one significantly distinct from the traditional Republican demographic.
Red, White & Blog spoke with Bryan Melmed, vice president of insights services at Exponential, to probe the many changes in the political sphere.
Melmed remarked that “the situation on the ground is moving particularly quickly. The idea of the typical Republican is a crude stereotype that will no longer satisfy the needs of political marketers.”
How different are Trump voters, compared to the Republicans marketers engaged with in 2012?

Trump’s Questioning of the Value of Data Worries Republicans<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/05/16/us/politics/ap-us-gop-2016-trump-data.html>
Associated Press // New York Times
Donald Trump says he plans to win the White House largely on the strength of his personality, brushing off the need for a heavy investment in what he calls the "overrated" use of data to shape campaign strategy and get out the vote.
Should he hold to that approach, which he outlined last week in an interview with The Associated Press, Trump will flout all conventions of what it takes to win a modern presidential campaign.
By doing so, critics in both parties argue, he'd give up what could be a strategic advantage over Hillary Clinton, his expected Democratic opponent.