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Better bot programming, please

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Illinois

* From Hari Sevugan at 270 Strategies, who is with the Daniel Biss campaign…

JB’s campaign was using Hustle to get me to come to an event. The idea is to use texts to allow real people to organize through one-on-one conversations. Instead, it looks like I got a bot. I wrote “new phone. who dis?” And got an instant reply with “great. RSVP here.”

Given how much money JB has and is spending, you’d think they could do better than this.

* The screen cap…

To me, anyway, it’s not so much that they’re using a bot, but that their bot doesn’t appear to be properly programmed. He didn’t reply with a “Yes,” so why the follow-up text?

posted by Rich Miller
Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:01 pm

Comments

Is this really newsworthy? The bigger story is that Biss has raised no money and has nothing innovative going on in his campaign.

Comment by interesting Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:05 pm
LOL - Biss has raised no money? As re you even paying attention? He raised over $1 million last quarter. He out raised all candidates (not named Pritzker) combined.

Comment by JoeMaddon Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:13 pm
Hustle can be an effective app when the scripts are programmed correctly. This particular canvasser clearly hit the ‘interested’ script button instead of ‘not interested’.

Comment by Stark Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:32 pm
If you google the 97779 shortcode it goes back to something called MobileCommons and not Hustle. Looks like they don’t have bots, but they do have scripted responses. Seems to be a case of a staffer who either made a small mistake, doesn’t care, or both.

Comment by TopHatMonocle Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:34 pm
Maybe Hustle interpreted “dis” as yes. /s

Comment by Cubs in '16 Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:44 pm
Reminds me of those Tinder profiles I always click on.

Comment by DespondentBlueDog Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 1:45 pm
Biss who?

I recognize JBs name but havent heard of the other one….

Comment by Ghost Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 4:36 pm
Dat not “Harris” either. Cash me ousside…

Comment by Molly Maguire Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 4:46 pm
Just food for thought, but commercial texts are illegal unless a person opts in. I’m guessing this falls under an exception (e.g. political speech, since political surveys are exempted), but is spam-texting people (with a questionable algorithm) a good tactic? I’m assuming Sevugan didn’t opt-in, which very well might be an incorrect assumption.

Comment by Leslie K Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 5:36 pm
@Leslie

Political texts, just like robocalls, are not “commercial” and therefore exempt from those restrictions.

Comment by Anonymous Thursday, Aug 10, 17 @ 9:23 pm
@Anonymous 9:23

Right. As I suggested–exempt. But probably still not a base-building idea.

Comment by Leslie K Friday, Aug 11, 17 @ 12:54 am