NOTE: If this is the first time you're seeing this thread: Go here for the TL;DR; version.
https://www.snipershide.com/shooting/threads/operation-megaphone-quorum-needed.6921698/#post-7468467
The problem: People don't think calling congress makes a difference, and they might even be right in a lot of cases.
The proposed solution: Make it easy and fun for people to call congress by creating a service that automates the calling process and dials a user-selectable set of congress members up to and including every one of them.
My personal opinion on this solution is that it's rude, crude, and borderline unethical. I think that's great. I also think it's hilarious.
Just a ballpark figure, with 100k people paying $5 each we can send Congress 53.5 million phone calls.
Operation MegaPhone theory of operation for version 1.0:
1.) User goes to www.INeedToCallCongress.com. (I own this domain
)
2.) User reads the mission statement, privacy agreement, terms of service, etc.
3.) User fills out first and last name, phone number, e-mail address, and payment information.
4.) User submits that information.
5.) User selects the congress members he/she wants to call and submits that.
5.) A phone call is generated to the user.
6.) Prompts (examples below) are given by the service. The user responds to them in their own words.
7.) The user is asked to say what they want their representatives (and others' representatives) to hear from them.
8.) These questions and responses are used to generate a DialogFlow chatbot that will take care of reaching a human, answering any questions the staffer has, and delivering the message.
9.) The selected congress members get dialed in a fairly complex way designed to be as polite as possible. (The user, if he or she so chooses, can monitor the progress of the phone calls. The phone calls will appear to have originated from the user.)
10.) Once the phone is answered, Google phone call transcription (integrated with DialogFlow) gains control over the phone call and goes about doing it's thing using the responses provided by the user.
11.) Profit.
Example prompts:
Say your name.
Say your zipcode
Say your city, state, and zipcode
Say yes.
Say no.
Say I do not want to answer that question.
Say your closing statement to end a phone call (e.g., Thank you very much, bye.)
Say your message (e.g., Hi, my name is Quick and Dirty and I'm calling to say that I expect Chuck Schumer to support the border wall.)
Do you want to leave a different message if the call goes to voicemail?
Say your message intended for a voicemail.
There are a few questions I have about some implementation details and I would appreciate your feedback.
1.) Payment methods. This service isn't cheap to operate due to telephony per-minute rates and API calls. It has to be paid for somehow.
Options that seem good to me:
A.) A pre-paid account with credits. (e.g., one credit equals one phone call to a congress member)
B.) One time payment (e.g., calculate the approximate cost for one phone call to a congress member, multiply that by the number members selected, user pays that amount)
A is good if this service is intended to exist for a while. I haven't made up my mind about that, since there's no telling what kind of demand this thing will have. B makes it a little tricky in case the call fails for some unrecoverable reason. I would want to re-fund or give a credit-like thing back to the user so he/she doesn't feel ripped off.
What payment option(s) would you be comfortable with?
2.) User data. The data that can be collected on a platform like this is badass and would be a shame to waste. I don't want to piss anyone off by collecting it, though, so I'm thinking the following is a good way to handle it.
A.) Ask the user for permission to store account information, call recordings/transcripts, etc.
B.) Ask the user if he/she wants to opt-in to a mailing list used for product updates, beta tests of other wild ideas, etc.
C.) Ask the user if he/she wants the calls to congress members streamed so that he/she can listen to them as they're happening (this does NOT give me permission to store call recordings.)
What information would you be OK or NOT OK with me storing for the purposes of expanding my influence, enhancing this product, and enhancing other products that will come later?
3.) My rough estimate of the price of a single operation involving AI (create profile + deliver one message to a congress member) is 28 cents. This is tricky to get exact since some messages are longer than others, and it can take more time to reach one congress member than it takes to reach another, and all of the expenses are based on per-minute rates. To dial all 535 members of congress, it would be about $150. If the per-minute charges for all of those calls fell below my 28 cent estimate, I'd profit. If it didn't, I'd lose money. If I abandon the chatbot portion and instead use some effective but not guaranteed tricks to detect when a human answers the phone, I can drop the price to about 2 cents for a single operation, or about $3 to call every member of congress. It wouldn't be as cool, though.
They say, "The more effort you put into to reaching your representative, the more weight your message holds."
My goal with this thing is to make some money, make an entrance into the world of quick and dirty politics, get my name out, and get on everybody's radar.
Using the AI method would get the attention of both Congress AND Google. A lot of unintended consequences are possible with that combo, but the quick and dirty method would be much cheaper and easier to make.
4.) How much profit should I take? I'm thinking $0.05 per call in either case, but with the QnD option I could take a dollar and dial everybody for less than $5 from the user.
4.) Do you like this idea? (Please explain why or why not)
5.) Would you use it? (Please explain why or why not)
6.) What am I missing?
7.) Payment processors. I haven't looked into this too much, yet. Ideally I'd find a good 2A friendly payment provider (perhaps BlueDog). Can anyone make recommendations on good companies that I can continue to use for things like this?
If I can get some good feedback, I'll start the LLC paperwork this week. The AI solution will take a few weeks to put together. The QnD solution would take about a week, maybe. The site and the payment processing will take some more time to figure out. I think March would be a good month for release and would give me plenty of time to get the bugs worked out and let y'all hammer on it a bit. Hopefully I'll have my personal site and video finished by then, too, and do both at once.
In theory it would be possible to get this thing in front of Mr. Pratt over at GOA and possibly get a reference sent out with his next call to action.
Final thoughts on all of this: I need money, I need exposure, and I need to build a reputation in order to scale up to a point where I can tackle the more serious issues. I think this will do all of that in a completely legal (for now) way that cannot be stopped except by my carriers (unlikely), domain registrar, Amazon, Google (if AI involved), or some bills passed that make it illegal to call congress on behalf of someone else. The next best alternative to put a stop to this thing would be by blocking out-of-state area codes from calling, which would not go over too well. I'm actually hoping that the service providers DO shut it down, as that opens up new fronts.
There's actually a service that does something similar to this using real people https://www.civicactionnetwork.us/faq
As always, Thanks for your time.
https://www.snipershide.com/shooting/threads/operation-megaphone-quorum-needed.6921698/#post-7468467
The problem: People don't think calling congress makes a difference, and they might even be right in a lot of cases.
The proposed solution: Make it easy and fun for people to call congress by creating a service that automates the calling process and dials a user-selectable set of congress members up to and including every one of them.
My personal opinion on this solution is that it's rude, crude, and borderline unethical. I think that's great. I also think it's hilarious.
Just a ballpark figure, with 100k people paying $5 each we can send Congress 53.5 million phone calls.
Operation MegaPhone theory of operation for version 1.0:
1.) User goes to www.INeedToCallCongress.com. (I own this domain
)2.) User reads the mission statement, privacy agreement, terms of service, etc.
3.) User fills out first and last name, phone number, e-mail address, and payment information.
4.) User submits that information.
5.) User selects the congress members he/she wants to call and submits that.
5.) A phone call is generated to the user.
6.) Prompts (examples below) are given by the service. The user responds to them in their own words.
7.) The user is asked to say what they want their representatives (and others' representatives) to hear from them.
8.) These questions and responses are used to generate a DialogFlow chatbot that will take care of reaching a human, answering any questions the staffer has, and delivering the message.
9.) The selected congress members get dialed in a fairly complex way designed to be as polite as possible. (The user, if he or she so chooses, can monitor the progress of the phone calls. The phone calls will appear to have originated from the user.)
10.) Once the phone is answered, Google phone call transcription (integrated with DialogFlow) gains control over the phone call and goes about doing it's thing using the responses provided by the user.
11.) Profit.
Example prompts:
Say your name.
Say your zipcode
Say your city, state, and zipcode
Say yes.
Say no.
Say I do not want to answer that question.
Say your closing statement to end a phone call (e.g., Thank you very much, bye.)
Say your message (e.g., Hi, my name is Quick and Dirty and I'm calling to say that I expect Chuck Schumer to support the border wall.)
Do you want to leave a different message if the call goes to voicemail?
Say your message intended for a voicemail.
There are a few questions I have about some implementation details and I would appreciate your feedback.
1.) Payment methods. This service isn't cheap to operate due to telephony per-minute rates and API calls. It has to be paid for somehow.
Options that seem good to me:
A.) A pre-paid account with credits. (e.g., one credit equals one phone call to a congress member)
B.) One time payment (e.g., calculate the approximate cost for one phone call to a congress member, multiply that by the number members selected, user pays that amount)
A is good if this service is intended to exist for a while. I haven't made up my mind about that, since there's no telling what kind of demand this thing will have. B makes it a little tricky in case the call fails for some unrecoverable reason. I would want to re-fund or give a credit-like thing back to the user so he/she doesn't feel ripped off.
What payment option(s) would you be comfortable with?
2.) User data. The data that can be collected on a platform like this is badass and would be a shame to waste. I don't want to piss anyone off by collecting it, though, so I'm thinking the following is a good way to handle it.
A.) Ask the user for permission to store account information, call recordings/transcripts, etc.
B.) Ask the user if he/she wants to opt-in to a mailing list used for product updates, beta tests of other wild ideas, etc.
C.) Ask the user if he/she wants the calls to congress members streamed so that he/she can listen to them as they're happening (this does NOT give me permission to store call recordings.)
What information would you be OK or NOT OK with me storing for the purposes of expanding my influence, enhancing this product, and enhancing other products that will come later?
3.) My rough estimate of the price of a single operation involving AI (create profile + deliver one message to a congress member) is 28 cents. This is tricky to get exact since some messages are longer than others, and it can take more time to reach one congress member than it takes to reach another, and all of the expenses are based on per-minute rates. To dial all 535 members of congress, it would be about $150. If the per-minute charges for all of those calls fell below my 28 cent estimate, I'd profit. If it didn't, I'd lose money. If I abandon the chatbot portion and instead use some effective but not guaranteed tricks to detect when a human answers the phone, I can drop the price to about 2 cents for a single operation, or about $3 to call every member of congress. It wouldn't be as cool, though.
They say, "The more effort you put into to reaching your representative, the more weight your message holds."
My goal with this thing is to make some money, make an entrance into the world of quick and dirty politics, get my name out, and get on everybody's radar.
Using the AI method would get the attention of both Congress AND Google. A lot of unintended consequences are possible with that combo, but the quick and dirty method would be much cheaper and easier to make.
4.) How much profit should I take? I'm thinking $0.05 per call in either case, but with the QnD option I could take a dollar and dial everybody for less than $5 from the user.
4.) Do you like this idea? (Please explain why or why not)
5.) Would you use it? (Please explain why or why not)
6.) What am I missing?
7.) Payment processors. I haven't looked into this too much, yet. Ideally I'd find a good 2A friendly payment provider (perhaps BlueDog). Can anyone make recommendations on good companies that I can continue to use for things like this?
If I can get some good feedback, I'll start the LLC paperwork this week. The AI solution will take a few weeks to put together. The QnD solution would take about a week, maybe. The site and the payment processing will take some more time to figure out. I think March would be a good month for release and would give me plenty of time to get the bugs worked out and let y'all hammer on it a bit. Hopefully I'll have my personal site and video finished by then, too, and do both at once.
In theory it would be possible to get this thing in front of Mr. Pratt over at GOA and possibly get a reference sent out with his next call to action.
Final thoughts on all of this: I need money, I need exposure, and I need to build a reputation in order to scale up to a point where I can tackle the more serious issues. I think this will do all of that in a completely legal (for now) way that cannot be stopped except by my carriers (unlikely), domain registrar, Amazon, Google (if AI involved), or some bills passed that make it illegal to call congress on behalf of someone else. The next best alternative to put a stop to this thing would be by blocking out-of-state area codes from calling, which would not go over too well. I'm actually hoping that the service providers DO shut it down, as that opens up new fronts.
There's actually a service that does something similar to this using real people https://www.civicactionnetwork.us/faq
As always, Thanks for your time.
Last edited:
