{"id":129073,"date":"2021-04-20T15:47:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T15:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=352512"},"modified":"2021-04-20T15:47:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T15:47:26","slug":"progressive-groups-fight-atampt-and-t-mobiles-new-texting-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/20\/progressive-groups-fight-atampt-and-t-mobiles-new-texting-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Groups Fight AT&T and T-Mobile\u2019s New Texting Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"
About a month<\/u> out from the 2020 presidential election, an app called RoboKiller <\/span>published the first glimpse<\/span><\/a> into how campaigns and advocacy groups were leveraging political texts and calls to shape the race. The app, designed to block automated calls and spam texts, found that after June 2020, robocalls declined, but political text messaging picked up. By the end of September, Republicans had sent 1.8 billion texts to voters, and Democrats had sent 902 million.<\/span> If you lived in a swing state, you were probably getting more than five or six texts per day from political volunteers \u2014 a level you\u2019d never experienced in prior cycles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The draw of text messaging as a political outreach tool is not hard to understand in an age when millions pay extra to skip TV ads and emails often go straight to the spam folder. Text message \u201copen rates\u201d <\/span>tend to be much higher<\/span><\/a> than those of email, making texting a more attractive way for campaigns to engage voters. And while businesses are required under federal law to get affirmative consent to contact individuals by text, so-called peer-to-peer messaging, or P2P, has long operated in a legal gray area. Because peer-to-peer messages are sent by individuals, though aided by applications, they have not qualified as the kind of automated mass text blasts that need opt-in consent.<\/span><\/p>\n But mobile carriers like T-Mobile and AT&T are unhappy with the number of spam text messages \u2014 including political ones \u2014 that their customers receive. In the next few months, they\u2019re rolling out major changes affecting who can send texts and how many they can send. The changes \u2014 named \u201c10DLC\u201d for the 10-digit long codes that high-volume businesses and apps use to text local numbers \u2014 will require high-volume text purveyors to register with the\u00a0<\/span>Campaign Registry<\/span><\/a>, a subsidiary of the Milan-based communications firm Kaleyra. Carriers will impose higher messaging fees on any businesses, campaigns, and other mass texting efforts that don\u2019t file with the Registry, and in some cases block them from delivering messages altogether.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In recent weeks, a coalition of liberal and progressive advocacy groups have mounted a campaign to put the brakes on 10DLC, rejecting the characterization of their messages as spam and raising concerns that the blunt 10DLC rules will hamper one of their most effective organizing tools. The opaque registration and vetting process, the groups warn, could lead to discrimination against smaller organizations with less-established track records, as well as overwhelm them with new and higher fees. In early March, a coalition of prominent left-leaning groups \u2014 including the Working Families Party, MoveOn, the NAACP, People\u2019s Action, the American Federation of Teachers, and Planned Parenthood \u2014 sent a letter to the White House and Congress urging intervention.<\/p>\n \u201cThough AT&T and T-Mobile claim 10DLC is intended to reduce unwanted text messages, these restrictions in actuality will quash grassroots advocacy, labor union organizing, and progressive movement building,\u201d the letter states. \u201cWe strongly urge AT&T and T-Mobile to reconsider the damage that 10DLC will cause. We are also calling on leaders in Washington to exercise your executive and legislative authority to defend citizen engagement and call on AT&T and T-Mobile to reverse these restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n CTIA, the telecom trade association that represents AT&T and T-Mobile USA, argues that mobile carriers have an obligation to respond to user frustration with unwanted text messaging. But critics say 10DLC points to the extraordinary power tech companies have to regulate who can communicate with the public.<\/p>\n \u201c10DLC isn\u2019t legislation, instead you have for-profit companies [that] are now acting as a government,\u201d said Debra Cleaver, founder of VoteAmerica, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group that sent peer-to-peer messaging to 30 million people last cycle. \u201cI am skeptical of private organizations playing this regulatory role.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n10DLC points to the extraordinary power tech companies have to regulate who can communicate with the public.<\/blockquote><\/p>\n