politics

I was wondering how one can defraud a voter...

The 15-second ad ends with a message to “REGISTER TO VOTE NOW.”

Users are asked for their address, phone number and age. After they hit submit, they’re told “thank you” — and that’s it.

By the end of their visit to Musk’s PAC website, not only were they not registered to vote, they also ended up handing over extremely valuable data to a billionaire-backed operation.

It’s unclear whether the stunt broke any campaign finance laws

That does seem like it goes beyond mere lying and into fraud, but I'm not a lawyer.

The dangerous thing about disinformation campaigns is that by the time something is done about it, the damage is already done.

A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes

I'm going to be repeating this whenever this ad blitz is mentioned because it is MUCH WORSE than you think. America PAC is partially funded by Musk and his old pals at Palantir. They sell data and analyses of it. You might get registered to vote if your state is a solid red or blue, but CNBC reports (archive):

[...] users who enter a ZIP code that indicates they live in a battleground state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, the process is very different.

Rather than be directed to their state’s voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

“What makes America PAC more unique: it is a billionaire-backed super PAC focused on door-to-door canvassing, which it can conduct in coordination with a presidential campaign,” Fischer said. “Thanks to a recent FEC advisory opinion, America PAC may legally coordinate its canvassing activities with the Trump campaign — meaning, among other things, that the Trump campaign may provide America PAC with the literature and scripts to make sure their efforts are consistent.”

The America PAC raised more than $8 million between April 1 and June 30, according to FEC records. It has received donations from veteran investor Doug Leone, cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and a company run by longtime venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, according to FEC records.

They also quote the NYT in saying Lonsdale is one of Musk's political confidants -- which is interesting because he's at Palantir which was you'd think of as his buddy Peter Theil's gig. Again, Palantir sells information, so in all likelihood they are going to take that input to figure out exactly how to target people to 'vote Trump' using the very information the public gave them for free!

He's going to lose the company if he can't deliver this election for Trump.

Saudis didn't buy it for nothing.

Don't forget to delete your Twitter account folks. Nothing of value there that you can't get elsewhere.

Shitbag needs to be kicked out of the country.

Muskrat's existence should be disrupted to boost humanity.

And how nothing can legally stop him