Wired UK – September 2019

041

campaign website with a donation

interface, bulk-email software,

and tools to compile and harness a

supporter database. CEO Lea Endres

• who took over from Gilliam in 2017,
  one year before he died at age 41, after
  a long battle with cancer – says: “The
  reason everyone was like, ‘Oh, thank
  God! We’re going to use NationBuilder’,
  was because it is an integrated system.”
  That is attractive for insurgent candi-
  dates in the US – from Trump to the
  Green Party’s Jill Stein – but even more

so for politicians in the UK or France,

where campaign spending limits or

the dearth of US-style deep-pocketed

donors make it inadvisable to splurge on

developing costly political technology

from scratch. The upshot is that Nation-

Builder’s way of winning elections

has gone global. “You can say that

NationBuilder is co-ordinating the

flows of global politics,” says Fenwick

McKelvey, a communications professor

at Montreal’s Concordia University.

One of Gilliam’s tenets was that

NationBuilder should be nonpartisan.

In the US, where parties relied on

politically aligned business (like the

progressive-only web-hoster NGP Van)

for technological firepower, this was

refreshing; it also dovetailed with the

libertarian ethos of 2009’s Silicon Valley.

But now, as all the major platforms are

pushed by public pressure and by both

state and Federal regulators to soften

their free-speech stance, it is remarkable

how NationBuilder has sailed through

the techlash relatively unscathed.

It has never banned a customer for

political reasons: figures such as British

far-right activist Tommy Robinson

• kicked off Facebook and Twitter, and
  obscured on YouTube – or alt-right
  Canadian Faith Goldy, have turned to
  NationBuilder to run campaigns, publish
  content and receive donations. However,
  Endres claims that the company is
  working on a strategy to confront
  extremism on the platform.
  Adapting to innumerable national
  regulations is another challenge. “It
  seems that often NationBuilder will sell
  in a country before knowing whether
  its technology necessarily
  complies with the regulatory
  context,” McKelvey says.
  Take NationBuilder Match,
  a feature using supporters’
  emails to retrieve public
  information from Facebook,
  Twitter and LinkedIn
  profiles. In 2017, France’s data
  protection authority banned
  the service. In Britain, the
  Information Commissioner’s
  Office expressed reserva-
  tions in a 2018 report, though
  the feature remains available.
  The company appears to be taking
  steps to get data protection right –
  both from a practical and reputational
  perspective. It says it is adopting a
  “privacy by default” approach, and
  has taken pains to be GDPR-com-
  pliant. One section on the company
  website, tagged “Myths”, underlines
  that NationBuilder is not associated
  with Cambridge Analytica, the political
  consultancy accused of weaponising
  Facebook data to help Donald Trump win
  in 2016. A new policy statement drafted
  in summer 2019 includes the passage:
  “Your data is yours. We will not sell it,
  use it, or interact with it in any way,
  unless asked to do so by you directly.”
  There is still room for improvement.
  A UK consultant notes that Nation-
  Builder does not offer a two-factor
  authentication log-in option – not ideal
  if you are handling sensitive voter data.
  However, a company spokesperson
  insists that this issue is “on our radar”.
  Gian Volpicelli nationbuilder.com

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Keep track of who is in the group chat

An obvious rule, but key – and disregarded

by many politicians. A select committee,

for instance, didn’t realise that its group

chat included industry lobbyists.

Don’t be too obvious

Prying eyes abound in Westminster, so a

group of key People’s Vote MPs named

a chat “Trains and Buses Group” to make

it seems boring, and so deter spies.

Don’t say anything interesting

That’s the advice from one

prominent backbencher who

was asked about how MPs

should behave on WhatsApp.

Relax Life is not only about

plotting, scheming and strategising. Use

WhatsApp in your downtime – like the

Labour MPs who created a chat to gossip

about Love Island. Ben Gartside

Plan coups WhatsApp is great

for machinations. Vote Leave used the

platform to sic MPs on David Cameron

before the Brexit referendum.

Don’t trust anyone Unplanned leaks

happen. One pro-Chequers MP says he

is thankful to the European Research

Group’s large chat, which does not

seem to check members’ identities.

Avoid insulting your colleagues

One ex-minister described a

parliamentary private secretary dating

a colleague in highly vulgar terms –

unaware the PPS was in the chat.

You can still be FOIed It may

be informal, but WhatsApp is subject

to Freedom of Information requests –

something two Westminster staffers

were not aware of when contacted.

‘ NationBuilder

is co-ordinating

the flows of

global politics’

WESTMINSTER IS ADDICTED

TO WHATSAPP.

Here’s how MPs manage the

threads on plots, coups

• and Love Island’s latest...

Leak your own messages Ever

heard of “WhatsApp press releases”?

Backbenchers put out outlandish texts

in a group chat, knowing that they will

inevitably be passed on to journalists.

09-19-STNationbuilderWhatsapp.indd 41 16/07/2019 16:46