Why Celebrities Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Post to You Through the Community
Targeted ads that appear on your Facebook feed or Twitter feed can seem terribly intrusive. after all, they often show up using personal information such as your location, age, or search history. And thanks to the new service that is causing a splash on social media, they are likely going to target you even more closely.
Recently, if you’ve ever come across a tweet or Instagram in which a celebrity posts their “phone number” to chat with you and write to you directly, that’s not what you think – instead of entering a private chat with the celebrity … , you have indeed subscribed to the automatic updates sent by text.
Back in October, reporter Taylor Lorenz detailed how it works for the New York Times . If you “text” celebrities at this number, you are most likely signing up for a service run by a tech startup called Community ; they help manage direct correspondence with large audiences on behalf of celebrities and other famous personalities as a way to “monetize” their social network.
What updates can you receive after you subscribe to the newsletter by text message? Depends. Sometimes it’s just a random string of photos and texts that Lorenz received from actor Ashton Kutcher. I signed up for Jon Favreau’s updates from Pod Save America and just got a bunch of news about their tour.
If you’re really, really lucky, you can send a message from the celebrity in question, but don’t count on it. Given the number of messages they are likely to receive, it would seem like an overwhelming effort to simply reply to each text. In the vast majority of cases, you are probably only getting these automatic updates.
If you’re a celebrity fanatic, signing up might not be such a bad idea. But we’ll do you a favor and tell you it’s not worth it. The chances of you getting a text message that isn’t just an automatic update is incredibly low, and while the Community makes sure they won’t sell your personal data to third parties, well, we’ve all heard that before , haven’t we? not we?