
Kongregate founder tackles 'dark money' in political campaigns - jim-greer
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/joegarofoli/article/Tech-mogul-tackles-dark-money-in-political-5704914.php?cmpid=hp-hc-bustech#photo-6757075
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smsm42
Anonymous speech means the speakers compete on message. Banning anonymous
speech means if you lose on message, and you have power, you can attack your
opponent on other aspects - threaten their livelihood by attacking their
employer, harass their relatives, alienate their friends and peers, in short -
make their life a living hell without even bothering to actually address their
message. This is especially an option when an independent citizen tries to
take on a corrupt and well-entrenched opponent, possessing the use of a vast
governmental machine. Of course, you can not run in elections anonymously -
but you can support a courageous individual who does, without fear of
retaliation for the entrenched power, if your privacy is respected. If it is
not, it is very easy to cut down an upstart candidate by an entrenched
incumbent by just attacking their supporters and intimidating them before the
challenger even becomes a threat.

Now, tell me please, how that would be a good thing?

US has a long standing tradition of anonymous political speech, starting with
the Federalist Papers. The consequences of getting rid of this tradition may
be much worse than the rosy picture the proponents paint.

~~~
jim-greer
You seem to think we're trying to stop people from anonymously posting their
opinions. We are not.

We are trying to stop people from spending millions of dollars on paid ads
advocating the defeat of a candidate they don't like (over 90% of independent
expenditures go to negative ads).

That's a little different than the federalist papers, I think.

If someone has a powerful message, they can make a YouTube video and it will
spread. If someone has a message that requires millions of dollars to be
powerful, then it's not unreasonable to know who is spending those millions.

> it is very easy to cut down an upstart candidate by an entrenched incumbent
> by just attacking their supporters and intimidating them before the
> challenger even becomes a threat

Can you cite any examples of this happening? Typically the attack is on the
upstart candidate, not their supporters.

~~~
smsm42
>>> You seem to think we're trying to stop people from anonymously posting
their opinions. We are not.

Of course not. You're trying to stop people from anonymously supporting people
that publicly post their opinion. That's not much better, in my eye, since in
our day and age, you can not effect change alone.

>>> We are trying to stop people from spending millions of dollars on paid ads
advocating the defeat of a candidate they don't like

This is an essence of politics - convincing people to adopt your point of view
by explaining it to them. Including when your point of view is the candidate
is bad. Imagine the worst guy you can think of - truly Hitler incarnate - is
running for your city council. Would you want to be able to donate to his
opponent's campaign? What if this bad guy is truly vindictive and sworn than
anybody who donates to his opponent would regret that very soon? Would you
want to be able to do it anonymously?

>>> Can you cite any examples of this happening?

I can cite a lot of instances where people were attacked and suffered for
their speech expressed in donations, Brandon Eich being easily the most recent
and prominent. However I'm pretty sure once privacy is gone, attacking the
supporters would be as prominent, simply because it would be an effective
tactics and there's absolutely nothing preventing its use.

~~~
jim-greer
> However I'm pretty sure once privacy is gone, attacking the supporters would
> be as prominent

Our country doesn't have a tradition of unlimited anonymous election spending.
That only started happening with Citizens United in 2010. So we're not about
to unleash some new torrent of attacks on previously anonymous donors.

You value privacy over transparency. I do in some areas, but not in political
spending. Seems like we'll have to agree to disagree.

~~~
smsm42
>>> Our country doesn't have a tradition of unlimited anonymous election
spending.

I'm pretty sure it does - people always donated to causes, and before the
current "money in politics" panic campaign, they were anonymous for the most
part. All the statutes requiring donor disclosure that I could find were
pretty new. Could you bring an example of donor disclosure requirements that
would qualify as "tradition"?

>>> That only started happening with Citizens United in 2010

Citizens United decision changed very little on establishing privacy or
disclosure. The decision was that the government can not ban a group of
people, organized as a company, labor union or any other association. It
actually upheld the disclosure requirements of BRCA. Of course, since the
group has no obligation to disclose its membership or revenue sources, it can
be used as a vehicle for anonymous speech. But that venue always existed, it
was just that BRCA unconstitutionally banned companies from political speech.

<i>You value privacy over transparency. I do in some areas, but not in
political spending.</i>

It's not the question of my values. I won't be the one who would abuse
disclosure requirements. It's not the question of my preferences, it's a
question of consequences which would happen regardless of what you and I
prefer. Ignoring this consequences because they don't align with your values
won't make them go away, they still will happen. Powerful people would still
abuse disclosure requirements to suppress their opponents and ruin their
supporter base, regardless of what you think about it.

It's like Myspace saying "we value user experience, so we won't implement
restrictive XSS filters". Then a guy named Samy comes and writes some JS code
and pretty soon he owns their user experience lock, stock and barrel. Did
their values help them prevent it? Not really. Now, in this case the effect is
a bunch of wrong bits on the internet and a couple of mildly bruised egos. But
with political campaign abuse the result would be bad laws passed, bad people
elected and lives of people ruined when they opposed some bad candidate.

~~~
jim-greer
> All the statutes requiring donor disclosure that I could find were pretty
> new

They date back to Watergate.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_finance_reform_in_the_United_States)

Since then, monied interests have found various ways around them, like soft
money (fixed by McCain-Feingold), and now 501c4s.

The SCOTUS majority in Citizens United actually assumed that there would be
full disclosure of the outside spending, since super PACs have to file with
the FEC. That's been evaded by having 501c4s and other anonymous organizations
listed as the donor.

~~~
smsm42
1970s is not exactly a "tradition". And there were only disclosure
requirements for committees, not for every organization that is engaged in
speech. And, of course, as you can see for yourself, it did not work - with
all regulation being continuously passed for 40 years, there's more and more
money in politics. But I'm sure this time it would be different.

As long as you keep pretending that "money is not speech" you would get
surprised when people who want to speak politically would do so despite a
myriad of regulations. The only way to prevent it is to restrict political
speech. So far SCOTUS has been very skeptical towards such efforts, but this
may be not forever, and one day First Amendment may fall. It would be a very
sad day for America.

~~~
jim-greer
This thread has gone on for a while I'm not going to keep arguing point by
point, but you misunderstand election law. Between Watergate and 2010 it was
hard to do anonymous electioneering, for any person or organization.

I think unlimited anonymous election spending is more of a problem than the
possibility that a big donor might get bad press or be shunned by potential
employers. You disagree. That's fine, let's get on with our lives and stop
trying to convince each other, which obviously isn't going to happen.

~~~
gaadd33
Just a question, prior to Watergate, would it have been possible for someone
to buy up hours of TV ads nationwide attacking the opponent of the person they
want to win? I don't know anything about election law, so I'm wondering if
something changed or if attack ads and massive spending just became more
accepted.

~~~
smsm42
I'm not sure about TV ads specifically (TV ads probably were much less
important in the 60s than now) but there's absolutely no reason to prevent
somebody from speaking against any political candidate. If the First Amendment
protects anything, it would definitely protect that.

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k2xl
I think it is very interesting the kind of crew that he assembled around him
to solve this problem - game developers, spam bot algorithm designers.. It is
definitely a team with a skillset "outside" of the establishment.

I met Jim Greer about 7-8 years ago when Kongregate was first starting up. He
definitely understands marketing and media - so I have no doubt his line of
thinking will be well suited into solving this issue.

I'm sure they will "iterate" their message multiple times as they grow and see
what works. As much as I dislike Grover Norquist, one can't deny that he
proved the power of "pledges." Dark money is just one of many problems in
Washington, so I'm glad these guys are taking it on.

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fragsworth
This doesn't surprise me.

I've met Jim Greer a few times, having done Clicker Heroes and Cloudstone with
Kongregate.

He's one of the very few tech leaders who is clearly an honest, genuine, down-
to-earth good guy. He obviously wants to do good for the world with this
company, and I'm glad for it.

~~~
kovacs
+1 I never worked with Jim but almost did and networked a number of times.
Your description matches my read exactly.

