[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Those are the kinds of moments I wish I had some charisma and run for an office myself, because I genuinely feel I lack any kind of real representation as a constituent.

The issue, however, is simple. There is real money on the table so anyone even thinking of running ( and making a change ) must be able to withstand likely quick and solid stomp, must be techy enough to understand the risks and PRy enough to be able to move in today's media landscape. Those skills tend of be somewhat rare on their own. Combination of those traits is likely more rare.

<< Throw in the tracking in apps and potential server side tracking that there is nothing I can do about.

And after that, almost inevitable hacks ( inevitable due to misaligned incentives for companies ).

[moolcool]

Even if you could somehow guarantee that there will never be hacks, I'd say that the very existence of this data is almost exclusively to the detriment of the "consumer". If, for example, one of the anti-abortion states wanted to subpoena Meta for location data of all of its residents who flew out of state to visit an abortion clinic, they easily could. If an insurance company wanted to partner with Google to see if you're getting your 10k steps every day, or speeding in your car, and adjust your rates accordingly, they easily could. We're living in a dogshit digital panopticon, and we need to take laws to reign this in extremely seriously.

[randomdata]

> Those are the kinds of moments I wish I had some charisma and run for an office myself, because I genuinely feel I lack any kind of real representation as a constituent.

If you won you'd still be beholden to the constituents as their representative, and seeing as how they, as a whole, do not align with your personal position, you're not going to be any further ahead. At least not without moving to a new constituency where the people are more likely to align – which is something you can also do as a constituent.

[michaelt]

To an extent - but a politician might have to deal with 30 different issues, and choosing the right stance on 5 of them will get you enough support to get elected.

Say the right things on taxes, guns and abortion and you can get elected regardless of your stance on nuclear power or microplastics or cryptocurrency.

[randomdata]

The election is merely the hiring process. Getting elect is necessary, but not where the job ends. It is post-election when the constituents start hammering you with their demands and as their representative you have to find the general sentiment of the crowd.

It is true that not everyone believes in the democratic process and, as such, will never speak to their representative again, if they even managed to during the election campaign, but then they're not really constituents in any meaningful sense and can be safely ignored.

[pdpi]

You don't get elected on your personality alone, but rather on some sort of electoral platform. Presumably, your platform aligns with your personal position, and part of your mandate is precisely to make good on those promises.

[randomdata]

The constituents would never want you to actually follow through with your platform as, even if well intentioned, is long outdated by the time you are able to do anything with it. Making decisions based on outdated and incomplete information would be considered horrendous by any reasonable person.

A platform merely provides points of interest to open the door to talk to the people who are interviewing you for the position. It's a cover letter, so to speak.

There is good reason why the constituents will show up at your office following the election to go over what actually needs to be done, just as any employer would. This is where the actual direction is set. There may end up be some overlap with the platform here – even a broken clock is right twice a day – but only after deeper consideration.

If you are not speaking to your hired representative regularly to ensure that your input in the direction is given, you're not participating in democracy. And, well, I guess as the saying goes: If you don't participate you can't complain. What is certain is that representatives, even the best ones, are not mind readers.

[nerdjon]

Regarding your last part, it is true that hacks are a serious concern. I guess I just can't bring myself to think about that (for this data) since I already feel powerless. Plus these companies are already doing stuff with my data that I don't want so how much worse could hackers be? (I know seriously much worse but for me there is not much difference between Facebook/google having this data and hackers... I still did not consent to it).

I agree on people running. I have been saying for several years that if a candidate came out and said "I don't have a strong technical understanding of [insert important technical discussion], but here are the people I will keep personally employed to help me with that to answer that question" will mean a lot to me. But I also know that admitting you don't know something will be picked up by the media and they will be destroyed for saying that, even though in admitting it is really a great sign.

Many of the people in power may have people that can explain it, but they will never truly understand it. Especially when they have so many other things they also have to deal with.