Disinformation campaigns use text messages ahead of the 2022 US midterms; in Kansas, voters got texts falsely saying a “yes” vote would protect abortion access
The biggest election disinformation event of the 2022 midterm primaries was not an elaborate Russian troll scheme that played out on Twitter or Facebook. Tweets: @kevincollier , @andymstone , @kevincollier , @wexler , @kevincollier , and @kevincollier Tweets: Kevin Collier / @kevincollier : Political campaigns in the US have already been given the green light to spam your phone with texts as long as they abide by legal loopholes, like having a person click an iPad for each text they send. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Andy Stone / @andymstone : “The biggest election disinformation event of the 2022 midterm primaries was not an elaborate Russian troll scheme that played out on Twitter or Facebook. It was some text messages.” https://twitter.com/... Kevin Collier / @kevincollier : Say what you will about American social media companies, but since 2016 they've built teams to root out disinformation campaigns. They get FBI tips. There's no analog with the telecom industry and no way for researchers to even begin to study it. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Nu Wexler / @wexler : “... while there's been substantial data-based research of disinformation on social media from academia and third-party social analytics companies, there's never been any way to comparably study text messages.” https://twitter.com/... Kevin Collier / @kevincollier : Foreign influence operations haven't been spamming Americans' phones (as far as we can tell), but US officials have repeatedly said Russia and Iran are looking for workarounds for election influence. Russia has repeatedly done this to Ukraine this year. https://www.nbcnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kevin Collier / @kevincollier : My latest: Bulk text messaging — a tactic that's hard for individuals to filter, increasingly common, and impossible for authorities to monitor — is poised to be the new front for election disinformation: https://www.nbcnews.com/...