Republican Election Group Is Attempting to Organize Against Text Message Filtering in iOS 26

From this paywalled report at Punchbowl News, as quoted by Taegan Goddard at Political Wire:

“The Senate GOP campaign arm is warning that Apple’s new iOS update could cost them $25 million in fundraising revenue, as well as priceless GOTV opportunities,” Punchbowl News reports.

Here’s a copy of the original memo from the NRSC (National Republican Senatorial Committee). What they’re freaking out about is the new iOS 26 Messages feature (which will be available in Messages on iPadOS and MacOS 26 too — but because these messages are sent as SMS and because the iPhone is so many people’s primary or sole messaging device, it’s the platform they’re focusing on) that will automatically sort messages from unknown senders into a new “Unknown Sender” inbox.

Quoting from the NRSC letter (emphasis in original):

Apple’s iOS 26 update introduces aggressive message filtering. Political texts — even from verified and compliant senders-will be treated as spam by default, silently sent to an “Unknown” inbox with no alerts or notifications. That change has profound implications for our ability to fundraise, mobilize voters, and run digital campaigns.

It’s important to understand: Apple isn’t just targeting cold outreach or spammy actors. Every political message — shortcode, long code, doesn’t matter-gets pushed into the dark. The only workaround-getting a voter to reply — is increasingly rare and entirely at the mercy of Apple’s unclear rules. How will a voter reply if they never get the message?

Apple’s “rules” for this new feature aren’t unclear at all. If a sender is not in your saved contacts and you’ve never sent or responded to a text message from them, they’re considered “unknown”. That’s it. The feature isn’t even really new — you’ve been able to filter messages like this in Messages for years now, but what iOS 26 changes is that it now will be on by default and has a new more prominent — better, IMO — interface for switching between filter views. Update: I was wrong that this filtering will be on by default in iOS 26 — I was fooled because I had previously enabled “Filter Unknown Senders” in Settings → Apps → Messages → Unknown & Spam (which you need to scroll down quite a bit to get to). I do think, though, that many more iOS users will be using this feature starting with iOS 26 — it’s both better designed and less hidden.

Back to the NRSC letter:

Here’s the shift in practice. Today, a voter with an iPhone gets our message just like a normal text. In iOS 26, unless that person has already replied, our message is silently sent to the “Unknown” inbox. No ping, no badge, just buried in an inbox few people ever check.

We’ve spent years complying with rigorous standards — providing full documentation, opt-in proof, and message samples via Campaign Verify and The Campaign Registry — yet Apple ignores that. Carriers respect it. Apple doesn’t.

Estimated prospecting losses: NRSC alone could see a $25M+ revenue hit. Since 70% of small-dollar donations come via text, and iPhones make up 60% of US mobile devices, the macro effect could be over $500M in lost GOP revenue. [...]

Unfortunately, K St and trade groups are asleep at the wheel. Apple isn’t engaging. But we have only a few weeks left before the public release. If we’re going to push back, it has to be now. We have a very narrow window to fix this.

“Unknown Senders” isn’t spam. It’s for ... unknown senders. Which these political texts are. I don’t know anyone who enjoys getting these texts in their primary timeline of messages. What the NRSC is asserting here is that they have a right to put political solicitations in your primary Messages view, and to have them appear as notifications, which is ridiculous.

Also, there’s no reason to believe that Republican candidates and groups will be more affected by this than Democratic ones. There’s no filtering by message content. It’s just a change to stop sending notifications for texts from unknown senders, and to put those messages in a separate timeline by default. People will check the Unknown Senders timeline occasionally too — all sorts of text messages from bots will go there, including some you want or need.

★ Monday, 28 July 2025