Chrome extension also sends your tweets to Congress

2025-04-28 01:03:45admin

Firing off a political tweet and want your representative to see it too? There's a Chrome extension for that.

It's called ePluribus, and with a click you can also send your supportive (or angry) message off to Congress without having to type it again.

SEE ALSO: U.S. knocked Russian troll operation offline on the day of the 2018 midterm election

Before you can send anything, the extension requires you to enter your address to find the right people, plus your phone number -- if it's required by your representative.

Once you're logged in, you'll be presented a list of reps when you tweet or post to Facebook. The extension is also added on the end of U.S. news sites like CNN, the New York Times, among other sites.

Via Giphy

"The idea is that people are already talking about politics on social media and news sites, but it doesn’t really matter right now because it’s in a bubble," Liam McCarty, co-founder of ePluribus, told Fast Company.

"It doesn’t get to the decision-maker. And so we are effectively providing an extra layer over that. You can both tell your friends what you think, but also get back to your representatives so that they can act on it."

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The company said it would look to verify constituents by mailing them a card with a verification code on it.

Co-founder Aidan McCarty told Mashable via email the company expects to run a private beta of the verification system "later in mid March and to launch a public version by the end of April at the latest."

Mail will be the only option to verify, as it's the "best, most robust way to verify address." ePluribus is also looking to add other verification options, but it won't be implementing those this year.

It's also worth noting ePluribus is currently only a Chrome extension, but aims to be available on other browsers and have an app version at some point.

As for how the company plans to make money over the long term, McCarty said it would look to monetize the identity component of the service.

"This does not involve selling user data, but rather gives our users complete control over their personal data and monetizes by providing secure sharing of this personal information to various service providers (e.g. government institutions) that will pay for these services," he explained.

ePluribus captures the minimum information needed to fill out a representatives' contact form (phone, email, name, address, and title), as well as some usage data.

Anyway, if you're the kind of person who wishes your representative would pay attention to your tweets, you might just have your answer.

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