[dimal]

Most people here are reading the headline and thinking that they’re pushing to make the census voluntary. The article actually says that they’re pushing to make the American Community Survey (ACS) voluntary. These are different things. According to the article, the ACS was started in 2006 and is conducted every year.

I’m not defending what the Republicans are doing. I’m just clarifying it, so at least people can discuss what’s actually happening instead of having knee jerk reactions.

[stackskipton]

I’ve gotten ACS twice and refused both times over how intrusive it is. You can read the survey here: https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/methodology/que...

My biggest complaint about it is it’s used a ton by private sector so it’s basically government sponsored research for companies.

[joshred]

I work for state government. We've used the ACS survey to try and determine whether we were unfairly targeting non-native English speakers with some of our decisions. It's also used a lot in academia.

If I had to guess, commercial organizations have access to more invasive and higher quality data that they obtain through credit card companies, lexus-nexus or other data brokers. This attitude mostly harms organizations involved in the social sciences.

[stackskipton]

I used to work for commercial organizations that sold marketing data and when some Republican senator came out against ACS, there was a bunch of activity to lobby hard to keep it. If we didn't need it, we wouldn't have spent all that money.

We mainly used it as cheap check of things and checksum against data we were getting. Without it, it would have been big blow.

[verdverm]

Researchers use the ACS too. I used it at a hackathon in college to help local nonprofits better decide where to allocate their limited resources

[lotsofpulp]

Would you rather the data only be visible to well funded companies?

[stackskipton]

So we need this bailout to even the playing field?

[conception]

Between giant corporations and research scientists? Yes?

[hodgehog11]

This is an important distinction, but I don't believe it negates the other discussion as far as the principle involved.

[kbelder]

Well, the survey is constitutionally mandated, whereas the ACS is just a law, so they exist on two different levels of enforceability and responsibility. The government can't not do a census; it's not permitted. The ACS can have its rules revised with no problem.