This story is framed as being about the election, about big telcos and wonky FCC policies, about Kushner, etc, but it’s also about something else. Twitter has put Trump on notice that when he or his campaign go too far, they’ll clamp down. So far, that’s only taken the form of after-the-fact warnings attached to his tweets, but the clear implication is that they can shut his account down — and have the internal structures needed to to do so on a moment’s notice. This fight over text spamming is a sign that Trump’s people recognize that. They’re focusing on building an alternative way to broadcast to their followers, and on defeating any mechanisms that could prevent them from spamming without limit. With that in mind, try reading this passage in a way that isn’t about wonky telecom policy:
/// In what seems like a violation of voluntary telecom industry guidelines, many of the messages reportedly contain no option for recipients to unsubscribe from the president’s hellhole contact list and are being sent to people who never actually signed up in the first place. One seen by [Business Insider] reads:
Hi it’s Pres. Trump. I need your help ASAP to FIGHT BACK against the radical left & take back my majority. Take a stand NOW.
About a million of the texts went through, according to Politico, in what was supposed to be a test run before the general election begins. A similar dust-up in the crucial period immediately preceding election day, however, could sabotage a candidate’s campaign. ///
But who says it’d have to be before the election? Why not after it? Shouting about how it was RIGGED, the results are fake, the Dems are TRAITORS, it’s a COUP, etc. Would it work? Not really — but it depends on what we mean by work, doesn’t it?