Trump Campaign Takes Fundraising Tip from Online Porn Industry (Circa 2005)

Trump Campaign Takes Fundraising Tip from Online Porn Industry (Circa 2005)

If you’re old enough, you may remember Columbia House and its “12 Albums for a Penny” marketing campaign — a musical recording subscription deceptively marketed as a one-time purchase of a single record with a too-good-to-be-true bonus of 11 additional records (or tapes, or CDs, depending on what Columbia House era we’re talking about here).

Fast forward a couple decades and the adult industry adopted this approach to adult website subscriptions, presenting consumers with $1 or “free” trial memberships that roll over into additional charges — and not only that, but which included little pre-checked boxes committing the customer to other subscriptions, as well. Before they knew it (in many cases literally before they knew it) people who thought they’d spent a dollar on porn were on the hook for over $100 in recurring monthly charges.

This same approach is being used now by political campaigns, with varying degrees of aggressiveness and sleaziness. And you’ll never guess which politician’s campaign appears to have been the most aggressive and the sleaziest.

Actually, you won’t have to guess which campaign it was, because the title of Calico’s post on the subject is: “Trump Campaign Takes Fundraising Tip from Online Porn Industry (Circa 2005)”

– Calico Rudasill, Sssh.com Rebillable Porn Movies For Women

Read on…

Every so often, you’ll see an article about how the porn industry has driven some manner of innovation that was later adopted far and wide by the “mainstream” world. 

While the truth is often more complicated than the claim, you’ll see this sort thing said about why VHS won out over Betamax in the video tape format wars, or about the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format wars, or going back further, assertions that among the first prominent applications of printing press and motion picture technology were numerous erotic works.

One place I hadn’t realized the porn industry had been so influential (although, to be fair, it might have to share credit with the old Columbia House “12 Tapes for a Penny!” marketing campaign) is in the area of political campaign fundraising.

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Yes, you read that right! Certain ‘billing techniques’ that have been employed (and, occasionally, severely abused) by the online porn industry for many years now appear to have crept their way into the political world – where, unsurprisingly, some folks are just as angry about them as porn customers are when they sign up for a “$1 trial membership” only to find themselves facing over $100 in credit card charges around a month later.

The technique in question is referred to by marketing folks and other spin doctors as “Negative Option” billing. Some of us who are mere consumers might be inclined to term this approach a “scam” rather than a “technique” – because at its core, it’s a technique that relies on consumers not paying much attention to the small print.

As the blog post linked to above puts it, negative option billing “refers to a business practice where a merchant provides a free trial or sample of goods/services, requires a credit card upon sign up and then bills the customer in the future unless they proactively cancel with the merchant.”

The above is a decent synopsis of what the negative billing option is, albeit one that makes it sound a bit less predatory than most people who complaint about negative billing might describe it. People who have found themselves surprised with hundreds – or, in the context of campaign fundraising, thousands – of dollars in unexpected charges on their credit cards might describe it more along these lines: 

“The negative billing option is a thing shitty fucking people do when their shitty fucking product isn’t good enough to make them lots of money without tricking me into spending more than I intended.”

In practice, the negative option often includes pre-checked boxes that a consumer (or in this case, campaign contributor) must uncheck if they don’t want something like an additional $1 trial membership to a different adult website – which then rolls over into a $39.95/month subscription if they don’t cancel that trial within a week, or something to that effect. 

But That’s Not All! (Because You Will Also Receive a Bank-Busting Credit Card Bill…)

In the New York Times article that broke the story about the Trump campaign’s use of the negative option in its fundraising, we hear several stories about people who thought they were giving the campaign a good size contribution, yes — $500 in the case of then-hospice patient Stacy Blatt – only to discover later that they’d been billed for several times that amount. 

While the fundraising emails, webpages, etc., that implored contributors to give money to the Trump campaign did have disclaimers and (purportedly, at least) were accompanied by reminder emails that went out in advance each time a credit card was billed, those disclaimers appear to have been made less prominent and noticeable as time went on – something I watched play out within the adult industry about 15 years ago, as well. Once people discovered how lucrative the negative option is, abuse of it seems to be just about inevitable.

Just like adult website operators often have in the past, the Trump campaign pushed the envelope of what credit card companies and credit card processing service providers will allow when it comes to the negative option, repeatedly fiddling with the verbiage and visibility of the disclaimer, presumably to better conceal the fact that the contributor was about to accept a massive recurring charge if they failed to uncheck that little box.

When Your “Supporter” is Really Just a “Mark”

To be clear, Trump’s campaign wasn’t the only one to make use of the negative option in its fundraising – but it does appear to be the campaign that was the most aggressive in its use of the negative option, as evidenced by the extent to which the Trump campaign’s total refunds eclipsed those of other campaigns. For example, the Times reports that in the final 10 weeks of 2020, Trump’s campaign issued 530,000 refunds totaling $64.3 million, while Joe Biden’s campaign issued 37,000 refunds totaling $5.6 million.

So long as you stay within the lines, negative billing is legal to do in the U.S., sleazy as it may seem. But if your political campaign has to resort to that sort of thing to be competitive with your rival and then you lose decisively anyway, what does that say about the strength of your political coalition, really?

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