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OK I don't know who exactly at @NHDems runs @SununuAlert but I feel like I need to write a short thread on it. While it's great to see the party getting into the bot-writing space, something I firmly believe we need to do more of, I doubt this one will be particularly effective.On twitter.com
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First of all, let's consider the bot's target audience. Its profile comment says it has a target audience of one, @GovChrisSununu. I highly doubt that this is actually the case, but let's take it at face-value for a second to show why that would be a bad idea.Permalink On twitter.com
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We don't know how exactly @GovChrisSununu even uses his account. More than likely he has someone else run it for him, and even if he logs into it himself occasionally, I doubt he even checks his notifications.Permalink On twitter.com
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And even if he does, he could still have some notification filters turned on in his settings to prevent him from seeing it. While there was a court ruling saying public figures can't block constituents from official accounts, I don't think it said anything about muting.Permalink On twitter.com
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But still, even if he does actually see the bot's tweets... what then? Do we really want him commenting on everything Trump tweets? Even if Trump does make a lot of bad tweets that demand comment on them, that's still not ALL his tweets. A lot of them are actually rather mundane.Permalink On twitter.com
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And even among the tweets Trump makes that ARE in fact bad enough to demand comment, the way the bot truncates the tweets in the process of copying means that the bad part could get cut off.Permalink On twitter.com
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Take the "once the looting starts, the shooting starts" tweet for instance. That part of it came near the end of Trump's original tweet. Searching for tweets from @SununuAlert containing the word "looting", however, turns up nothing, presumably bc it got cut off in copying.Permalink On twitter.com
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Sure, Sununu could always click the link to see the full original tweet, but, I mean, c'mon on, are we really expecting him to do that? No, I think it's more likely that the governor is ignoring the bot just as much as he's ignoring the real @realDonaldTrump.Permalink On twitter.com
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So, let's go back to the question of who exactly the bot's target audience is here. If @NHDems have built a bot that SAYS it's targeting @GovChrisSununu, but that target audience is probably ignoring it, then who's it REALLY targeting?Permalink On twitter.com
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Well, the bot also hashtags all its tweets with #nhpolitics, which does actually have a decent number of people who check it regularly (compared to some other hashtags), so let's say the bot's audience is actually the NH political community at large.Permalink On twitter.com
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Let's assume what it's actually doing here is saying, "See New Hampshire voters? This is the kind of thing that the governor is ignoring." But even if that's what it's actually doing... do we really think any voters will actually find that convincing?Permalink On twitter.com
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Most people already know what Trump is tweeting, if not from following him himself, then from all the media coverage that each of his more provocative tweets generates.Permalink On twitter.com
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Having yet another Trump retweeter bot to point out that Sununu is ignoring him doesn't really add anything to the conversation, it just amplifies an already-overamplified windbag and clogs up the #nhpolitics hashtag with excess noise that drowns out the signal.Permalink On twitter.com
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A third possibility is that the bot's target audience isn't so much the #nhpolitics electorate at large, but rather the reporters on it, so that when they ask the governor if he's seen Trump's latest tweet or not, it makes it more ridiculous for him to deny having seen it.Permalink On twitter.com
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But even if that's the case... is that REALLY what you want our reporters spending their interview time on? We have plenty of local issues they could be asking about instead.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyways, to sum up, while I applaud @NHDems for trying their hand at writing a bot, I still doubt that @SununuAlert will have much of an effect either on the gov. or the electorate, and I'd encourage @NHDems to go back to the drawing board & try writing a different bot instead.Permalink On twitter.com
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