As a developer who relies on text message alerts, I've had to block nearly daily texts in the past few months. These texts, asking for donations, opinions on polls, etc., are becoming a nuisance. It's ironic that the same individuals advocating for an end to spam calls are the ones engaging in this bothersome behavior, targeting potential supporters. I’ve observed similar behavior through email as well.
I'm a semi-recent convert back to iPhone from Pixel. One thing I deeply miss is spam filtering of text messages.
This is a huge lacking feature in iPhone. You don't get these kind of low-interest texts on Pixel. Truly spammy texts get filtered to a spam folder. Political texts like this still exist, but they don't generate notifications.
Note that political messages are specifically exempt from anti-spam legislation in the US.
Totally agree, the options that iOS gives you to attempt to control spam are basically either pathetic or non-existent. I get tons of spam calls from one country, presumably doing a "missed call" scam trying to get me to call back and pay crazy rates. I don't see any reason why implementing a "block everything from country code x" feature would not be completely trivial, and it would instantly solve the problem. Yet my stupid smartphone can't do it.
It’s actually quite hilarious because companies like Twilio are so strict about SMS compliance, yet we get so much damn spam.
So then the good guys like us are constantly sweating the details about getting consent.
But then I get dozens of political donation spam messages and I wonder if Twilio and others even give a shit because they make so much money from these.
> But then I get dozens of political donation spam messages and I wonder if Twilio and others even give a shit because they make so much money from these.
They don't care because most all political messages in any form are exempt from spam legislation, so, at worst, the impact to Twilio is perception in the market (and how many people know what companies are driving SMS communications?)
Last I understood, political texts still couldn't be sent using an "auto dialer" unless prior consent is given. Twilio and automated sms senders shouldn't be sending non-consented political messages.
It's just anecdotal, but I've got three phone numbers (throwaway T-Mobile and Verizon, and a Google Voice number that is semi-precious and that I have had for most of two decades), and: I almost never get spam texts.
It happens a few times per year, at most.
Same with email, and I don't try particularly hard to keep my email addresses private: Sure, there's spam, but it's not absolutely onerous.
A couple of times when rotating cellular plans to chase a deal (which is trivial with GV), I've landed with a recycled number that received a lot of junk, but none of it was "spam": It was just legit stuff that the previous holder of that number had signed up for.
In one case, a recycled number passively leaked so much personal information about the previous person that I could have done a fairly thorough job of acting like them, but it was still not spam.
I was getting messages from AOC's campaign that were so strident and offensive I thought they might be a "false flag" operation. Mostly I get messages from Democrats because I made the mistake (in terms of being a spam target) of giving money to their campaigns a few years back but I got a few messages from Republicans the other day.
Inexplicably I get a high volume of calls from a Republican fundraising organization that persist despite my telling them not to call and using the "broken record" response that "I can understand that someone could agree with your points but Jan 6 was just not cool"
In Greece right now, there is a scandal from an MP of the ruling party, grabbing electoral data right from the Ministry of Interior and using it for the EU Parliament elections. She had to withdraw her candidacy.
Call me paranoid, but I have a hunch that Cambridge Analytica never went away and the whole thing was used as a demo to show that their techniques can be used for other campaigns.
I think it would not be so hard for people to figure out how to do something similar again, particularly when we have much better A.I. that can “understand” text enough to classify people in terms of politics, psychology, lifestyle and other categories based on what they write.
These texts have taught me to never make a political donation, ever.
My tactic has been to tell them if they keep texting me I will vote for their opponent, simply out of spite. There are a bunch of lists, so I’ve had to do this a few times over the last couple elections, but things over the last several months have been pretty peaceful when it comes to political texts.
Not so much the past few weeks, but I was getting a lot of them before the Texas primary. And I expect it to pick up again as we get closer to the US elections.
My tactic is similar to that of a poster below. I respond back with “ I don't vote for candidates who text spam me. Die in a fire.” and block the number.
Campaigns are very data driven these days. I assume they're AB testing everything and it's working to maximize donations, but it's definitely been a turn off for me.
I also dislike the hyperbole in the messages. It's not "Hi, I'm Adam running for xyz position", but "My opponent is trying to destroy the country! Donate now to save America!"
This is a huge lacking feature in iPhone. You don't get these kind of low-interest texts on Pixel. Truly spammy texts get filtered to a spam folder. Political texts like this still exist, but they don't generate notifications.
Note that political messages are specifically exempt from anti-spam legislation in the US.