John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:
It doesn’t feel like merely a minor inconvenience for having contributed to U.S. political campaigns in the past — it feels like punishment. Like anyone who gives to a political campaign is a sucker. It’s absolutely infuriating. I care deeply about U.S. politics, particularly in this ongoing Trump era, but these spam text messages absolutely have made me less willing to contribute money to campaigns and causes I believe in. Political consultants may well have analytics that show that these spams-to-people-who’ve-previously-donated-money-to-our-side “work”, but for me — and many of my friends — it has had the opposite effect. I’ve contributed significantly less money this year than in 2020 — and I now avoid ever donating small amounts to down-ballot campaigns — and the one and only reason why is that I’m annoyed that my previous contributions directly led Democratic campaigns and PACs to send me a zillion spam texts. Not only have I never, in my life, given a penny to any group whom I feel is spamming me, but this has made me gun-shy about contributing any money at all. I’ll never ever give out my actual phone number or email address to any political campaign ever again. They clearly have no respect for my time and attention. I think they’ve talked themselves into thinking this strategy “works” because it works for some of the previous donors they spam with new solicitations, but their analytics won’t show the people like me who just stop or greatly decrease their contributions without clicking any of their links. I suppose their analytics can count the “STOP” responses I’ve started sending, but I doubt they can correlate those “STOP”s with my drop-off in contributions.
Man, this perfectly states how I feel as well. I've been sitting out donating this season because of this feeling. Unlike Gruber, I haven't found the "STOP" to work at all, and wish that Apple's functionality to block and report did more.
What to Do With Unwanted Political Spam Texts
Link to: https://support.apple.com/en-hk/guide/iphone/iph203ab0be4/ios