Do you agree with the MAYDAY Team?

In the past week, I tweeted about frustration with MAYDAY's congressional calling campaign, and suggested that an impediment was MAYDAY's unwillingness to confront, decide and state expressly on its website what limitations there are on MAYDAY's efforts by reason of the Federal campaign finance "coordination" rules. (See MAYDAY and the "coordination" rules.)

Two reply tweets I received prompted me to post How do you build a movement? and to tweet links to that.

Today I received the below tweet from the MAYDAY Team saying I was banned for spamming.

@RobShattuckAL06 not affecting efforts at all. this is an issue only for you. but you were banned bc of spam, not being a candidate.

— MAYDAY.US (@MAYDAYUS) May 26, 2015

Ten days ago I posted Spreading MAYDAY via Twitter, which sought to obtain discussion and views about my tweeting. This was not the first time I tried to put the same up for discussion.

Now that the MAYDAY Team has spoken and said I have been banned for spamming, I wish to resume solicitation of discussion about this matter.

To me it seems that it should be fairly easy for you to make your own evaluation of this.

First, evaluate for yourself how you think the MAYDAY Team and its use of the social media are doing as MAYDAY goes about trying to "rally the most effective, targeted citizen lobbying campaign we can to close the gap on reform," having as a goal to recruit 70 members of Congress to support fundamental reform.  In making your evaluation, you might find helpful How is the MAYDAY rally going?

Please note the "Help us recruit more people to help" request in 3. Spread the Word of the "Take Action" webpage on the MAYDAY site, and see what you can find in the MAYDAY social media evidencing recruiting efforts (other than by myself) going on for MAYDAY.

Compare the messaging that MAYDAY team has done with the messaging I have done by means of my tweeting.

My tweeting has attracted a great deal of interest from MAYDAY supporters and supporters of other campaign finance reform organizations. This interest has been manifested by hundreds of retweets, favoritings, follows, etc., and thousands of page views of links to my blog that I have been tweeting. A partial listing of blog entries and numbers of page views is as follows:

If you want to go outside the box   164 page views
Start your district's CFR campaign this weekend   566 page views
You be a Congressional candidate   503 page views
Help MAYDAY's Congressional calling campaign   539 page views
Report on #TweetToDefeatMoney   365 page views
#TweetToDefeatMoney, Tweet Sheet 1   621 page views
MAYDAY's 2015 plan and public mobilization   1863 page views
I tweet to defeat the money monster   1193 page views
To campaign finance reform organizations   819 page views
Update for reweeters, etc.   1261 page views
Tweet to defeat the money monster   2508 page views
Tweeting launch of stage two   1175 page views

I have informed MAYDAY and the MAYDAY team many times about my tweeting and about the interest my tweeting was attracting from MAYDAY supporters and from supporters of other campaign finance reform organizations. MAYDAY never expressed any encouragement of my work or any interest in the positive results my work was achieving, and steadfastly declined to engage in any discussion about the benefits versus disadvantages of my tweeting.

As indicated in How do you build a movement?, I was prepared to chalk up MAYDAY's nonresponsiveness to limitations MAYDAY felt it was constrained by under the Federal campaign finance "coordination" rules.

The MAYDAY team has now said, no, that is not the reason, and I have been banned because of my spamming.

I acknowledge that some people have strong negative reactions to receiving unsolicited tweets from tweeters they do not know, and some of those people may even oppose campaign finance reform because I have tweeted to them. This has been very minuscule in my experience.

That very small downside needs to be weighed against the benefit of inspiring greater interest and activism by MAYDAY supporters and other campaign finance reformers, and ultimately of spreading the MAYDAY name and the cause of campaign finance reform to the public generally. I cite the foregoing interest that my tweeting has attracted as demonstrating the benefits of the tweeting I am doing. You can do your own evaluation.

Update 5/27

@RobShattuckAL06 This isn't new. Or shouldn't be. You were banned *last year* from fb for nonstop spam & self-promotion in unrelated threads

— MAYDAY.US (@MAYDAYUS) May 27, 2015

@MAYDAYUS Thanks, but I think hundreds of reformers are supportive of my efforts. I will continue to try to grow that number.

— Rob Shattuck (@RobShattuckAL06) May 27, 2015