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| Amazon Echo streaming device. |
Florida Campaign ads appear on Oregon radio station?
Several nights in the fall of 2018 with the midterm elections looming I was using my Amazon Echo to listen to Ground Zero, hosted by Clyde Lewis. His show is broadcast on KXL 101 FM based in Portland, Oregon. I live in Florida.
Imagine my surprise when during one of the commercial breaks I heard ads for Democrat candidates here in Florida! Those included Andrew Gillum, Senator Bill Nelson, Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy and Florida Senate candidate Kayser Enneking. Of the four, only Stephanie Murphy would go on to win.
I never heard any ads for Republican candidates or Independents, only Democrats. This follows in line with their bias against the Republican party. In the election of 2016, Amazon featured jokes on the presidential candidates that a user could ask their AI, Alexa. Those jokes were only for Republican candidates—never any Democrats. No Hillary or Bernie jokes. I know, I tried. Did they ever consider that more than Democrats own the Echo? Apparently not.
Technically, I have no answer for how they did this. I don't believe the Florida ads were being broadcast on KXL. I assume Amazon had a way of inserting the ads into the ad rotation, externally. I also tried another station that Ground Zero airs on, WGST (Atlanta), but did not hear any Florida campaign ads on that station. I conclude they know what station I listen to on a regular basis on my Echo and targeted it. They database all users of the Echo device and catalog lots of user data such as their phone numbers, address, most listened to radio stations, artists and so on.
I was only able to make recordings of only two candidates, Kayser Enneking and Stephanie Murphy.
So finally, Amazon's attempt to influence the election cycle was a failure. It will be interesting to see what they attempt in 2020.
You may go to Soundcloud link below to listen to them at Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/geoguitar-1/sets/alexa-recordings
