This election is perhaps the most heated, acrimonious one in recent memory. But beyond the headlines, how do people really feel? Messaging app Viber wants to find out, and has launched a survey bot to ask its 800 million users.
The bot begins by asking the user who they would vote for, between Trump, Clinton, or “I don’t care”. To contextualize the data, the bot also asks the user for their age, gender, and if they use Android or iOS.
Although third-parties are extremely popular this election cycle, there’s no option to write in Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, or Evan McMullin.
And if you’re a floating voter, you can type in “reset” and re-cast your ballot.
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Viber notes that its survey doesn’t follow the scientific methodology of old-school election polls – the kind of ones that Nate Silver uses at FiveThirtyEight. But rather, it’ll be an interesting window into how the larger world perceives Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
According to Michael Shmilov, Viber COO, the company hopes that its experiment will “reveal new worldwide trends and will encourage new involvement of social platforms in political dialogue.”
Viber isn’t the only app to ask its users who they intend to vote for. A few days ago, Tinder launched “Swipe The Vote”, which lets users see if they match more with Clinton or Trump on policy issues.
If you’ve got Viber installed on your device, you can test it out from today here.
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