Think about who you text in your own life - it’s your friends, your family, people that you’re very close with. SMS is really just the most common denominator that everybody can be a part of. And then basically, you just start texting them.Ĭotler praises text campaigning for allowing candidates to reach constituents they might not normally be able to find on the ground, whether it’s because they live in remote places, don’t answer phone calls, or are deaf or hearing-impaired. You ask them their name, address, zip code. So folks kind of text in, they join the list the same way they would go to a website and fill out their email or sign a petition. It’s basically a direct communication from either the candidate or representative of the campaign to voters who are supporting them or want to learn more. Later in the episode, Lloyd Cotler, co-founder of Banter Messaging - an agency that helps organizations talk to customers through SMS - reveals what it was like to be the first-ever SMS director for a political campaign when he worked for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. They’ve just chosen not to,” Bohn pointed out. To be clear, there’s no technical reason that RCS couldn’t be end-to-end encrypted. They could see what’s going on in group texts. “ be allowed to potentially see the images that are sent. Bohn says that although RCS is a much better experience, it probably won’t be encrypted, creating privacy issues. One possible fix for these issues is a technology called RCS (rich communication services), but it’s not going to be perfect. What everybody wants is to get on to some sort of universal system that actually is more secure than SMS but also has all of those features.” In theory, all those messages should have just like gone into the ether, but in practice, they got stuck on a server. It runs through servers and different carriers have different policies about how long they hang onto those messages. “Text messages are such a primitive technology that’s just unencrypted text going out over the network. Because it works on nearly every phone, regardless of data capabilities, it’s become the most popular messaging service in the world.ĭieter Bohn, executive editor at The Verge, explains exactly what the technical issues with SMS technology are both from a user perspective and from the viewpoint of the app itself: It’s because of trouble like this that many consumers are switching to richer messaging services like WhatsApp, iMessage, Signal, and even Facebook Messenger. Then when the server was fixed on November 17, all of the trapped messages were finally sent out. They say it happened because a server malfunctioned on February 14. And in the case of the Valentine’s Day glitch, a company called Syniverse, which provides networking services, took the blame for the messages being delayed. The confusion shed light on the fact that the SMS (short message service) texting technology we use every day - and more than likely take for granted - is actually quite old as far as technologies go.Ĭarriers rely on third-party vendors to actually deliver the messages. I said, “I don’t know what this is about.” He sent me a screenshot of his text messages, and there had been a text from me at 3:36 am that morning, and it said in all caps “AND A FUCKING BAGEL” with like six exclamation points. I hadn’t texted him, so it was just out of nowhere. I don’t think this was for me, but I hope it was at least a pumpernickel bagel.” It’s like, I don’t understand. So, Thursday morning, I was out walking my dog, and I got a text from my ex - and we haven’t talked since June. On this episode of the Reset podcast, Hickman tells host Arielle Duhaime-Ross how she found out her February text had only just arrived to her now-ex’s phone at 3 am the night before. The snafu became a nightmare scenario for many.īlair Hickman, Vox’s director of audience, was one of those people. On November 7, 2019, more than 168,000 people woke up to find that text messages they thought they’d sent on Valentine’s Day in fact were only just delivered overnight, nine months later.
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