- never signed up for anything like this,
- never donated to or signed up for emails from the DNC, et al.,
- political texts like this come all the time, and
- I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)
Political messages also are allowed to circumvent the CAN-SPAM act and other messaging regulations. I have plans to just leave my phone in airplane mode until mid-November. Sure, people may think I died, but at least I’ll have peace.
They (politicos) argue it’s necessary to get the word out, one party in particular has a habit of sourcing their messaging through various vendors that may or may not follow the rules.
Legally, they must honor stop. They can be reported and fined too.
…of course in real life, it’s super hard to stop all this trash messaging nobody wants. Wonder how much carbon this spamming generates.
It’s still spam and I’ll report it and block the number every time.
Not a lot of carbon, SMS messages are very energy/resource efficient. The more direct alternative would be flyers and mail letters, which create more carbon mainly due to paper use and also cause pollution.
Agreed there is always a more, and really want all paper spam to stop immediately. Disagree on the impact of mass-messaging at a nation scale.
Every SMS will wake a phone and keep it active for 10-20 seconds, if background processes firing don’t keep it awake longer. This robs every texted phone of battery wear and flash wear, as well as using energy that will have to be recharged. (Arguably, pointless app updates to manipulate review systems are an even bigger energy drain here. Or how carriers put cheaper plans on weaker bands, causing the modem to have to yell louder.)
The messages are in the control channel through the cell network, and the network must schedule them inside the management traffic. Probably less of a power hit here, but still a hit. There’s power running the machines sending the messages, and the microscopic hit from always on network hardware along the whole path. Individually, it’s all noise. Collectively, it’s going to be quantifiable power use.