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Comment by jimbobimbo | Hacker News Reader

Donate to one political campaign and suddenly you'll be getting text solicitations from all over the country every election cycle. F that, I want this regulation.

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You actually don't even have to donate to get on these lists. I contacted my reps, both worthless shit-bags, about various issues over the years and have been on their lists ever since. I get junk mail telling me how they voted and how they intend to vote, spam calls from their party looking for donations, etc. The motherfuckers are like a bad disease that flares up around election time though some of the bastards seem to campaign constantly. This is why I use a fake name gmail account though google keeps trying to get me to give a real phone number to be able to access my junk mail. Not gonna happen. If that shit was important to me they would already have my number.

Someone mistyped a number somewhere and now my phone number is associated with a random person. Every election cycle I start getting texts that I never consented to and I have no recourse because it's always a different number and seemingly different organization sending the texts.

Same here. Some startup ceo misentered my phone number somewhere and now I get a few calls and texts a week looking for Jonathan and trying to buy accounts receivables or loan money.

It’s frustrating and there’s no way to get off their list. It’s always new companies too.

I’d pay $5 each for an AI honeypot that just occupies their time by talking with them and emailing them to waste their time until this becomes unprofitable.

I wouldn't get your hopes up, I'm sure there'll be an exemption for political activities...

Very likely since with the Do Not Call Registry (that already exists), there are exemptions for political campaigns, charities, debt collection, and a few other things.

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/national-do-not-call-regis...

I door knocked for a candidate and had their campaign manager mark me as deceased in the main party db. No more texts.

Door knocking is even better than text spam at getting me not to vote for a candidate.

I actually prefer door knocking. Sure it’s a greater inconvenience. But it’s much rarer than text. It’s also neat to see people who are passionate about something enough to walk around and knock on doors.

The exception is when they have paid knockers instead of volunteers. It’s so sad for the people and the candidate who thinks that somehow helps their chances.

I can easily block political text spam. Last election cycle I don't think any made it through to me. On the other hand one of the local political parties and candidates affiliated to them or the state party sent 4 door knockers to my house.

It’s like this buying products too. I buy one thing, and suddenly that’s free license to email me whenever the company feels like. Often, it seems it doesn’t even matter if you click the “no marketing” checkbox, or sometimes there isn’t one at all.

Yeah, I'm afraid the political spam is free. I get tons of stuff, from the Republican party in particular which is frankly kinda odd given the downwards-trending-graph that is the overlap in our values.

Most of the spam makes me even less likely to vote for that person.

Many of them want me to click on Columbian links. For American politics. And, I presume, enter stuff about my political beliefs into the other end. … yeah, no thanks?

I liked Trump and voted for him. I donated to his campaign. I also signed up for his email blasts which turned out to be a horrible idea. I "successfully unsubscribed" probably more than 5 times before blocking the address, as well as receiving campaign emails from other obviously associated parties. Never again.

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