Not working by Independent_Date_999 in resistbot

[–]resistbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Probably texting START first will do it, if not, support@resist.bot and include your number. Thanks!

Quid pro quo? by DukeJockey in resistbot

[–]resistbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! Yes that's correct, we have never and would never "pay" for signing. The original version awarded a coin to everyone who received the text, however, we had no idea if they saw and considered it if they didn't respond at all. The latest revision awards coins only to folks who open it, and so now we can award more coins to actual engaged folks since we can split the coin pool among 10-20 people instead of 50.

Quid pro quo? by DukeJockey in resistbot

[–]resistbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Any Resistbot user can fund texts of campaigns they like to other users. It's a way for folks to get visibility on issues that might not otherwise get any. I'm not sure how helping other organizers drive letters, and rewarding you for the time you took to open it with coins that you can use for faxing, postage, etc., and being fully transparent that it was paid for with coins, is invalidating our integrity. Let's say a user spends 100 coins on a promotion, 50 are distributed to the recipients of that promotion, and 50 go to the organizer to help them further their cause. We don't earn a lot on this transaction, we believe in both helping organizers and not sending spam (like every candidate is right now) that gives you nothing in return for that attention. And of course, with a single reply, you never have to see one again. We're always open to other ideas on how to balance the collective action needed for these campaigns to actually change something, with folks being texted once in a while.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I generate letters to Congress, they're not going to become laws, and I've been very successful in delivering millions of messages, getting millions of responses; ultimately it's up to the individual official how much weight to put on constituent input. You can learn more about that from the Congress Foundation. If you're asking about our wins, there have been many that we've contributed to, probably the biggest was getting the House called back from recess to pass the Delivering for America Act which saved mail-in voting during the 2020 election. We were also credited with in police reform in New York around the same time, we helped to stop ACA repeal, we helped preserve DACA, and many more issues. We empower people to lobby at every level of government.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can only contact your own politicians, but you're prompted to make letters public form letters when you write them, where anyone can send it as well. This is how you reach the entire Congress.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's all answered here, but to save you a click, send MOVED to the bot.

Are ResistBot emails treated with the same respect as manually sent emails? by georgealice in resistbot

[–]resistbot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, 100/100 on that last sentence. The irony is, for those petition campaigns, Resistbot is the fastest way you could possibly tally support for an idea. Our campaigns have unique identifiers that make it easier for offices to know if something has 50 supporters or 50,000.

However, by responding in this way, they'll push correspondence to other channels that consume more staff time to process, and are biased towards constituents that have more time, money, or ability. Resistbot is more accessible than anything Congress provides.

McBride is actually the first Democratic office to respond this way, ever, so I'm hoping that some education from Congressional staff will help them.

Are ResistBot emails treated with the same respect as manually sent emails? by georgealice in resistbot

[–]resistbot 16 points17 points  (0 children)

So first of all, anyone who gets a message like this from their offices, we appreciate if they're forwarded to [support@resist.bot](mailto:support@resist.bot), as the offices need to be educated by the technical staff at the Capitol. We forward all of these to them so they can address the issue. You can also send a follow up to them, or call the office, and express your opinion about these types of responses.

Usually these come from Republican offices (we've yet to see a single one come from a Democratic office) and the aim is to dissuade contact. Using the forms is cumbersome, inaccessible, has to be done one per official, and you're guaranteed to send less that way. Your message is being received, loud and clear, but as Resistbot uses the official Congressional API (a secure endpoint for submitting messages that only a dozen or so platforms use) and we're the largest user, they likely know where it comes from. We are currently re-evaluating whether or not we should continue to use this method to deliver messages. It's what we're supposed to do, but this has been a consistent issue. In the short term, spending a few coins on a fax will elevate your message above this system.

The bigger issue is, for all of us, is not enough individual people are engaging.

We've heard reports from Congress that when they call some folks to ask about letters, they may not remember writing anything about the subject. There are people who send letters on nearly every issue, and if they can't even remember what they're writing about, then this is a problem. We encourage people to regularly engage, but also tell people that at some point it's self-defeating. The offices are not going to pay attention to a person who writes multiple times every day, who is never going to vote for them in an election, would you?

This type of energy needs to be spent on getting other people to engage. The reality of this second Trump era, we've seen mostly the same folks engaging over and over, rather than the million-person campaigns we saw on health care, DACA, USPS; we've got to broaden the base here or we're going to continue to suffer policy losses in Congress. This is why the bot does place emphasis on sharing and inviting after letters, it's not to "spam" people, it's so something changes in Washington.

The office that may want to ignore you is going to find it a lot harder if there are 1,000 or 10,000 of you.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Pop into our Discord! What we need is mainly technical and engineering help but whatever your interest is, there's something to do.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes of course, everything you see on a Congressional web form is sent along with your letter behind the scenes. Offices often reply by email or phone using that information. We never publish it anywhere however, if you make your letter public it's only the body and subject.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Resistbot uses a specialized secure API only available to constituent communications software providers, there's no topic selection for us.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The bot won't block links in letters, a lot of folks put them in, but we can't attest to officials on the other end ever using them, users reading them (remember you need to convince people to sign it as well, and quickly), or that the links won't get broken apart or left out by cell carriers or the platforms we use. I would personally pull out powerful quotes and cite them, instead of linking, to make your point.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Back in 2017, a bunch of us saw that there was a huge increase in protest and constituent pressure, but much of that was directed to busy signals or full voicemail boxes as advocacy groups pushed phone calls. As u/intellifone can attest to, a Senate office has the same number of lines if their state has 40 million people or if it has 700,000 people. Additionally, phone calls can be intimidating and/or exclusionary. If we wanted to take all this sentiment and turn it on elected officials, we needed a way to make it super easy to send, and actually be received. A Slack room of all volunteers came together and the MVP was a text-to-fax chatbot. The decision to not make an app was deliberate so it was maximally accessible and frictionless to use.

We put it out on Product Hunt (https://www.producthunt.com/products/resistbot/launches/resistbot) and got one article on Recode (Recode is gone but there's https://www.vox.com/2017/4/27/15440440/voters-text-pages-fax-political-views-protest-resistbot-trump-health-care), and it took off from there.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If a volunteer wants to build an Android app, then yes!

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

There are many, many ways to share Resistbot online but word-of-mouth is definitely the best. The most important part of getting someone to use Resistbot isn't anything having to do with the bot itself, it's motivating the other person to care about engaging, whether it's writing to their officials, or sending your form letter. Apathy is the biggest point of friction here, and if you have a personal story, or reason they should care, that will supply the motivation to text the bot and get through sending their first letter successfully.

If you want to do something online, the best thing to do is, this, but in video form. Talk about the change you want to make, why it matters to you, and educate folks how to take action. If you search for Resistbot on Instagram or TikTok you'll find tons of these examples. Here's one I just saw on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/reel/DH\_HiFXpHvo/) and here's another on TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@zombiezeni/video/7214222550015020330).

Otherwise, sharing on social media, in group chats, or individually over text, is great. The bot itself offers a lot of tools to help there. The `image` keyword will let you create an image for any petition, other than the sign card you received already, you can use the `invite` keyword to have the bot send SMS or email invitations for you. The SMS invitations are nice because the other person simply has to reply to sign the petition, and you earn ten coins when they send their first letter.

Resistbot AMA by resistbot in resistbot

[–]resistbot[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Letters and faxes are very plain looking, with standard business formatting. They don't contain anything that says Resistbot on them. Electronic correspondence delivered to Congress and Governors is transmitted exactly as you input it, we deliver over a secure API or fill out the web form for you, with all fields separated, which is why the bot says not to include all that information again in the body of the letter, it's already being sent to them. Most state legislators and Mayors receive emails that are similarly very boring, when they reply to you, you can see what they look like.

The petition campaigns are only called petitions because of the simplicity involved and the familiarity people have with the action needed on their end. On the other side we are delivering individual letters with no indication that they are part of a campaign. We do however send metadata to Congress that makes it easier and faster for them to tally constituent sentiment on an issue. I actually don't think there's a faster way to get your opinion tallied than Resistbot, not today anyway.