The messages didn't appear to be sent to particularly strategic targets. | POLITICO Screen grab Anti-Obama text ads cause a stir

Hundreds of people reported receiving strident, unsolicited anti-Obama text messages throughout Tuesday evening in an unusual spamming incident that had Twitter and Facebook users in an uproar.

“Voting for Obama means voting for same-sex marriage,” one message read. Others included “Obama stole $716 Billion in Medicare. We cant [sic] trust Obama to protect our seniors,” “Obama is using your tax dollars to fund Planned Parenthood and abortions. Is that right” and “VP Biden mocks a fallen Navy Seal during memorial. Our military deserves better.”


Another said: “Obama supports transgender marriage in America. Obamas values are just wrong.”

While several people on social media sites angrily posted that the messages were coming from Republican Mitt Romney, there is no indication that the messages were sanctioned or produced by his campaign. The messages do not carry the customary notations of who approved or paid for political ads.

The messages did not appear to be sent to particularly strategic targets — several hard-core Democrats were among the known recipients, as were children and people in non-battleground regions — but they came from several email addresses, including republicanett.com, votegopett.com, aiccomett.com and informedett.com. That suggests they were sent from the Internet rather than from other phones.

Every domain checked by POLITICO was masked so Internet users could not trace their origins. It’s not known how many people received these messages.

Among the recipients was the 13-year-old daughter of New York Times congressional correspondent Jonathan Weisman, who tweeted, “Hey [email protected], not cool texting my daughter your little hit piece. I’d like you to stop it.” His daughter received the message: “Obama denies protection to babies who survive abortions. Obama is just wrong.” Weisman promptly then got into a Twitter feud with a follower who asked if he was also offended by the Obama campaign’s provocative “First Time” ad by Lena Dunham. “Stop looking for false equivalence,” Weisman retorted.

Some Twitter users said they would report it as spam to the FCC, but the legality of this is murky.

Just last week, the FCC announced it would start taking comments until Nov. 23 on a petition to make Internet-to-phone text messaging declared a form of autodialing. The technology is not covered under the Technology Consumer Protection Act, and many view it as an end run around the law prohibiting text spam.

Yet, the approach is considered in political consultant circles as much of a loser tactic as — and sounds quite similar to — the scary, hyperbolic robocalls voters often receive in the waning days of an election.

The petition to the FCC was filed by Scott Goodstein, a former Obama 2008 online external director and founder of the digital campaign consultancy Revolution Messaging. He was outraged by the flurry of anti-Obama texts. He calls it “modern-day push polling.”

“These abuses threaten what is a very promising technology of text messaging for political engagement,” he told POLITICO. “People did not optin to receive these messages and ultimately end up having to pay the cost for this unwanted misinformation that appeared on their mobile phone.”