--- title: Somebody please stop the spam texts | daily.dev description: A developer complains about a surge of political and marketing spam texts and explains why he refuses to reply STOP. He says replying STOP feels like accepting... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Somebody please stop the spam texts | daily.dev og:description: A developer complains about a surge of political and marketing spam texts and explains why he refuses to reply STOP. He says replying STOP feels like accepting... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/zI9MtVTgk.png og:image:alt: Somebody please stop the spam texts og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Somebody please stop the spam texts **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer complains about a surge of political and marketing spam texts and explains why he refuses to reply STOP. He says replying STOP feels like accepting that spammers can text anyone by default and the burden falls on the recipient to opt out. He's used Apple's 'Delete and Report Spam' option for months, but new spam doesn't seem to land in the Spam folder, and he seems to find that option can't be combined with the auto-STOP 'Delete and Stop' feature. He suggests Apple Intelligence could learn from reported spam examples to auto-filter similar future texts. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why doesn't reporting a text as spam on iPhone stop future spam texts from similar numbers? Reporting a message with 'Delete and Report Spam' on iPhone does not appear to train any filter or add the sender to a blocklist, so new spam keeps arriving unfiltered. Separately, iPhone offers a 'Delete and Stop' option that auto-sends a STOP reply, but it's mutually exclusive with 'Delete and Report Spam', so you can't do both at once. _Developers tracking how little iOS spam filtering actually improves over time can follow commentary like this on daily.dev._ ### Does replying STOP to a spam text actually unsubscribe you from future messages? It can reduce messages from that specific sender, since even texts that look personal and handwritten reveal themselves as part of a mass campaign once you reply STOP. But doing so also implicitly accepts that senders can text you unsolicited by default and puts the burden on you to opt out of every individual campaign one at a time. _Anyone weighing privacy trade-offs around opt-out mechanisms can find similar takes on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 249 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-27). **TL;DR:** Commenters broadly share the frustration with spam texts, debating whether replying STOP actually helps or just confirms a live number, and pointing out that political texts/calls are largely exempt from the regulations that curb commercial spam. **Sentiment:** 5% positive · 25% mixed · 70% skeptical **The case for** - Some report that replying STOP or END did eventually reduce spam from that specific number or campaign. - STOP replies may be enforced at the carrier or platform level (e.g., Twilio, Amazon SNS) by suppressing future messages to that number. - Screening unknown senders/callers or using third-party call-blocking apps (NoMoRobo, SpamBlocker) meaningfully cuts the annoyance for some people. **The pushback** - Replying STOP just confirms the number is active and monitored, potentially making things worse, especially with scammers. - Political texts and calls are largely exempt from spam/telemarketing laws, so campaigns and PACs can ignore opt-out requests with impunity. - Donor/voter data gets sold, cloned, and resold across many PACs and campaigns, so opting out of one list doesn't stop the flood from others. - Even legitimate apps (DoorDash, Wolt, Walmart, Amazon) abuse push notifications for marketing, opting users in by default and sometimes bypassing OS-level location/permission expectations. - Enforcement of existing regulations (TCPA, FCC rules) is seen as weak or nonexistent, undermining their deterrent effect. **By community** - hackernews (heated): Extensive, contentious back-and-forth over whether STOP replies help or hurt, compounded by broad agreement that political and PAC spam exploits regulatory loopholes with little real enforcement. **Hottest debate:** Whether replying STOP to spam texts actually reduces future messages or simply confirms the number is active and makes targeting worse. **Open questions** - Is there any real enforcement mechanism that can hold PACs and data brokers accountable for ignoring opt-out requests? - Why do carriers and platforms whitelist political texts/calls instead of applying the same spam protections used for commercial senders? - Could a local on-device AI/LLM filter effectively distinguish genuine communications from ads/political spam before legislation catches up? **Highlights** > I wonder if 'STOP or I will vote for your opponent' might work. Then again, if that worked, you might just start receiving messages asking you to vote for their opponent instead. > — [didgetmaster on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250886) > The secret they use is that the company with the list NEVER sends anything, it simply sells the list to a campaign or PAC or whomever, and THAT group DOES remove you, but the moment a new campaign or PAC or whomever springs up, they buy the same list again. This is why every campaign is a new legal entity each time around. > — [bombcar on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251403) > Indeed, My 90 year-old, deeply religious mother sent a televangelist $10 one time. A year later when she was in the hospital for a few weeks. I picked up her mail once a week and quickly found out I had to bring a large sack for one week of mail. For every actual bill she got, there were over a hundred pieces of physical spam mail from every kind of religious and political cause, candidate and prophet imaginable - usually in large four-color, glossy envelopes. It's not just offshore call center con artists preying on the elderly. There's a huge, highly profitable, legal-but-scummy onshore industry too. It was obvious that 'nice Reverend on TV' sold her out to anyone who'd pay - and then they sold it and so on... > — [mrandish on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251856) > There has been some good investigative reporting on this. The answer is yes, they do make a lot of money off of this. But the details are awful. Only like 12% of the revenue actually makes its way to productive campaigning. Donors are older on average than the average voter. And they hit whales. There are elderly people who donate many times a day. These are basically the same kinds of texts that scammers send and they catch people in almost exactly the same way. Donations to democratic candidates by young people are down compared to prior elections while donations by the elderly are way up. Politicians are making these spam companies rich while they bleed their elderly voters dry and aggravate their future electorate. Idiocy. > — [UncleMeat on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50253430) > I think in the future you’ll just have a local AI model determine if any message is an advert or a genuine communication and it just filters the ads out for you. > — [Gigachad on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50251075) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50250016) · 92 points · 249 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [These special phone and app features can help protect you from spyware](https://daily.dev/posts/these-special-phone-and-app-features-can-help-protect-you-from-spyware-atfhje8go) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Carrier filtering is blocking legitimate SMS. The operators getting through are doing three things differently](https://daily.dev/posts/carrier-filtering-is-blocking-legitimate-sms-the-operators-getting-through-are-doing-three-things-d-uvlwvj0r5) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Ring, reject, repeat: South Africa’s spam call crisis](https://daily.dev/posts/ring-reject-repeat-south-africa-s-spam-call-crisis-jfp2vmn2x) · TechCentral · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#apple](https://daily.dev/tags/apple), [#ios](https://daily.dev/tags/ios), [#privacy](https://daily.dev/tags/privacy) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Somebody please stop the spam texts","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk"},"datePublished":"2026-10-26T21:27:36.633Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T06:33:11.063Z","description":"A developer complains about a surge of political and marketing spam texts and explains why he refuses to reply STOP. He says replying STOP feels like accepting...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/b17c95a433db2c620623c3f10ff481ef?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/b17c95a433db2c620623c3f10ff481ef?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"apple,ios,privacy","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Somebody please stop the spam texts"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/somebody-please-stop-the-spam-texts-zi9mtvtgk#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why doesn't reporting a text as spam on iPhone stop future spam texts from similar numbers?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Reporting a message with 'Delete and Report Spam' on iPhone does not appear to train any filter or add the sender to a blocklist, so new spam keeps arriving unfiltered. Separately, iPhone offers a 'Delete and Stop' option that auto-sends a STOP reply, but it's mutually exclusive with 'Delete and Report Spam', so you can't do both at once. Developers tracking how little iOS spam filtering actually improves over time can follow commentary like this on daily.dev."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Does replying STOP to a spam text actually unsubscribe you from future messages?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It can reduce messages from that specific sender, since even texts that look personal and handwritten reveal themselves as part of a mass campaign once you reply STOP. But doing so also implicitly accepts that senders can text you unsolicited by default and puts the burden on you to opt out of every individual campaign one at a time. Anyone weighing privacy trade-offs around opt-out mechanisms can find similar takes on daily.dev."}}]} ```