A stupid ad has been doing the rounds on Twitter today, encouraging Clinton supporters to stay at home and vote by text. This should go without saying, but in this election, everything seems to be bad, so: you can’t vote by text. This is not America’s Got Talent, though it might feel like it at times.
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The picture on Twitter steals all of its visual design language from the Clinton campaign, and even features a bunch of disclaimers and a “Paid for by Hillary for President 2016” message along the bottom. It passes the most basic sniff test, which is probably why it’s been spread widely across social media by this point.
According to NYMag, texting the number doesn’t continue the scam, but actually corrects the texter as to the original of the ad:
“If you follow the instructions and text the number, you get a response informing you “the ad you saw was not approved by iVisionMobile OR Hillary for America in any way” and offers the real number for text updates from the Clinton campaign. (Heaven only knows what random list I put my phone number on testing this out.) When I replied “STOP,” I received a notification that I had been “opted out of False HFA Ad on Twitter.” (iVision Mobile did not immediately respond to Select All’s request for comment.)”
Twitter appears to have started deleting tweets with the picture at this point, although it has not issued a public comment on the photo (or its policy on fake election information) yet. Add it to the list of trolls that Twitter has not dealt with.
