Uh oh! The folks from Twitter are twittering on the brink of legal disaster.
It seems that when you sign up for Twitter, the provide you with a list of suggested users to follow, and these suggestions seem to be pretty effective at creating followers for those users. And now Twitter’s list of suggested users to follow in California has caught the eye of the ever vigilant California Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC).
Twitter, you see, has been suggesting to new users that they might want to follow San Francisco mayor and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom. Newsom has over one million followers. And Twitter suggests that you might want to follow California Attorney General Jerry Brown, who is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for Governor. Brown has over 900,000 followers. But as of late October, it did not suggest that you might want to follow E-Bay founder and GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, or State Insurance Commissioner and GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner (who also once headed a high-tech start up), or former congressman and GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell. All three had fewer than 5,000 followers at the end of October.
Now the FPPC is considering whether such referrals from the Twitter staff should count as in-kind contributions to the candidates campaigns. Earlier this year, Twitter was offered as much as $500,000 for a three year spot on the referral list, and $120,000 for a one year appearance. So it even appears there is a reasonable way to figure out the market value of a listing. “Does it bring voters? Does it bring contributors? Does it bring volunteers? Probably all of the above,” said Garry South, a Democratic campaign strategist who was advising Newsom. Sounds valuable to me!
After this story broke in late October, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who headed the small, informal group that made the selections, declared that Twitter would do away with the suggested followers list. In the meantime, Twitter added all three Republican candidates to the suggested list, helping to add over 50,000 new followers to each within days. Meanwhile, despite his big Twitter following, Newsom dropped out of the race.
We’re not sure what all this means about the ultimate value of Twitter as a political tool, or what if anything the FPPC will decide to do. We’re pretty sure that Twitter is not a major threat to democracy, and would advise the FPPC to back away. But as always, it is interesting to watch the impulse to regulate new technologies, and the difficulties and dangers of trying to insure electoral fairness through the power of government.
Thanks to Steve Petzolt for calling this little kerfuffle to my attention.
P.S. You can follow me on Twitter (@CommishSmith), CCP President Sean Parnell is @SeanParnellCCP and CCP’s main Twitter account is @campaignfreedom. We’re also on Facebook and YouTube, and you can read our blog (and press releases, news items and research) via RSS.