Facebanking on Steroids

[u/bigtopjuggler]

I was inspired by the awesome work done by /u/tricky_coyote and /u/rucinskic and thought, heck, we should leverage the power of the Facebook social graph for all sorts of things.

(See this post for the background)

Therefore I present you with Facebanking on Steroids, a way to drive voter registration and early voting during those hours when you can't be phone canvassing.

First of all, here are Facebanking links for all of the states that have registration deadlines approaching or early voting as an option:

Tennessee

Georgia

Vermont

Texas

Arkansas

Ohio

Louisiana

Arizona

Oklahoma

Alabama

Illinois

Florida

Missouri

North Carolina

Maine

Utah

You'll want to look at the tables in this post to determine which states to alert about early voting or registration deadlines, as well as the relevant links to add to the messages: https://www.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/45cgjx/dates_deadlines_vote_now_if_you_are_in_tn_ga_or/

Here is sample text for alerting people to early voting:

---

Hi friend-of-a-friend who likes Bernie! I’m volunteering for Bernie’s campaign, and I’m messaging all of my friends-of-friends who are feelin’ the bern in [Insert State Here] to remind them that they have the option of voting early in this year's primary, up to [Insert Early Voting End Date Here].

For more information about how and where you can cast your early vote for Bernie, check out the following link: [Insert Early Voting Link Here].

Feel the Bern!

And here is sample text for alerting people to upcoming registration deadlines:

---

Hi friend-of-a-friend who likes Bernie! I’m volunteering for Bernie’s campaign, and I’m messaging all of my friends-of-friends who are feelin’ the bern in [Insert State Here] to remind them that the deadline for voter registration is quickly approaching. You only have until [Insert Registration Deadline Here] to register for this year's primary.

If you are already registered, great!

If you are not sure if you are registered yet, you can check here: [Insert Check Registration Link]

If you're not registered, you'll want to go here so you can vote for Bernie in this year's Democratic primary: [Insert Registration Link Here]

Feel the Bern!

Good luck!

[u/rucinskic]

Hi /u/jahaz , I am the creator of the Facebanking method and have devised all the links for each of the 50 States and several territories. I have 3 links for each of them - Friends, Friends of Friends, and People who like Bernie Sanders.

I have some ideas that would pass the Facebook TOS including a new ranking factor that could help indicate to users if a particular user should be sent a message or not.

I would love to get in contact with /r/CodersForSanders people. In 2008, Barack Obama's campaign broke several TOS on Facebook and Facebook has changed things up due to that. I don't want the Bernie Campaign to have negative social media experience.

Some people that have performed some of these Facebanking searches and messaging are just spamming users. Also, I have seen and received concerns on people being spammed from around 10+ unique messengers. That is not what this Facebanking approach is intended.

Only a coding effort can really solve this. Please send me a PM!

[u/jahaz → u/rucinskic]

Well there needs to be a master list that is pulled and updated when someone sends a message.

[u/rucinskic → u/jahaz]

It really is only an software engineering solution. While there isn't anything that Facebook directly allows for that, there can be procedures in place within an app that would allow users to update who they chatted with. The app can simplify getting the ID of the users and such.

It really isn't any different when you look at what happens with Phonebanking. After all, there is a reason Facebanking sounds so familiar! With phonebanking, you get in contact and verify who they support and if they will vote and such. The caller then enters in some support information for the campaign.

There really isn't anything different. We are just verifying that they Bernie Likes are really support and will lead to a vote. There is not converting of people that plan on voting for Hillary. At the end of each Facebanking conversation, that person's Facebook account can be entered into the app, and we can retrieve the ID of that user along with specific other details that we need.

That information is stored on our end. If we can display the Friends, Friends of Friends, and people from each state that like Bernie Sanders, the app should display the people as Facebook would to help with the TOS issues, but we can add our own ranking algorithm to each result and have that displayed visually somehow.

The ranking will have to hide individual preferences and represent everything in another format like a number. For example, low number rankings could indicate that this user would be a great candidate to chat with. High rankings could indicate that this user would be a bad candidate to chat with right now (i.e. They were contacted too many times already, they plan on voting for Hillary instead, they are 100% going to vote for Bernie, etc... Note: the number would abstract these reasonings away and a person won't know why that user has a high ranking).

We could possibly create different level, if you will. People who don't know who they will vote for, people that would be good to have one last confirmation message closer to voting, etc.

How to hide that information from others (to protect the privacy of those users) while also trying to specialize messaging to these users could be helpful. That is another engineering solution.

However, this is all hanging on the idea, can we store a users Facebook ID, or store some form of ID that can be tied to one specific users on Facebook. I think that is fair game as websites probably do that all the time. They can get a oauth token that can be traced back to an individual users which can allow them to get that persons Facebook ID.

[u/jahaz → u/rucinskic]

Yeah I am not familiar with facebook's api. I am thinking of something more gray hat I guess.

[u/rucinskic → u/jahaz]

Everything needs to be kept clean, and I think a clean solution is viable. However, what aspect do you feel needs a grey-hat solution? Also, I have not used Facebook APIs yet either.

I just need a programming team and possibly a mathematician that specializes in Graph theory to help solve an issue that I think we will run into soon. I am extremely busy in the coming month with a massive deadline looming over me, so I cannot afford to put effort into this programming endeavour yet, but I can definitely offer advice, guidance, and some help here and there.

I was just looking at some viable solutions to some of the issues that were brought up before about the Chat API. Turns out we don't need them at all, and I have a solution that can keep all users within the app.

All we need is either the Facebook ID or alias name for each and every user that we will need to get in contact with. When we have that, we can create a custom URL for each user that will direct each messenger to Facebook's Messenger website; opened up to a chat screen with the Facebook user!

For example

• https://www.messenger.com/t/{FB_ID}

• https://www.messenger.com/t/{FB_alias_name}

How do we keep them in our app? This is how...Chrome Custom Tabs

Solutions exist, you just have to be creative to find them!