We’ve Now Solved The Mystery Behind Ashton Kutcher’s Bizarre Phone Number Tweet

The other day, Ashton Kutcher tweeted out a bizarre message to his 18 million followers. It was as follows:

“I miss having a real connection w/ real people. My Community. From now on you can just text me,” he shared with his 18 million Twitter followers. “I won’t be able to respond to everyone but at least we can be real w/ each other & I can share the unedited latest & greatest in my world +1 (319) 519-0576.”

There’s NO WAY he gave out is Actual Number, right?

Well, he added “Yes this is my#,” and naturally, people texted it. This is the response they got back:

“Hey it’s Ashton. This is an autotext to let you know I got your message, everything else will be from me. Make sure you click the link and add yourself to my phone so I can respond to you. Welcome to my Community!”

“This is what the lawyers are making me text you. There will be no more of that!!”

This is all I’ve seen from his Twitter:

Changing my social media strategy starting tomorrow. Stay tuned.

— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) January 29, 2019

I will repost soon… sms is a fragile beast

— ashton kutcher (@aplusk) January 30, 2019

What’s the dealio?

A journalist at Wired tried to get the the bottom of it. It sounds like he’s launching a new social media platform.

“Ashton …” I texted back. “Are you launching a social media platform or a phishing scam?”

Sadly, the former appears closer to what’s going on.

Met with silence this time, I threw caution to the wind and clicked the link. It took me to a sign-up screen—”powered by community,” it read at the bottom—confirming my phone number and asking for my name, birthday, city, the usual. Now, Community.com’s homepage is currently useless if you want to know anything beyond what the word looks like in sans serif. But the Terms of Service more helpfully reveal that Community “provides its clients (including influencers, musicians, athletes, brands, actors, their agents, and others, collectively, ‘Clients’) the ability through a non-exclusive, revocable license to send and receive text messages from users of the Service by using a ten-digit phone number provided by COMMUNITY (the ‘COMMUNITY Phone Number’).”

The TOS also told me, “You understand and acknowledge that conversations using the Service are not private conversations with Clients but are intended as messages sent and interactions solely for purposes of promoting and/or advertising the Client and the Client’s products and service.”

Oh, OK.

Turns out, Community is the new name of Shimmur, Inc., which launched in 2014 to connect social media celebs with their fans. After downloading the Shimmur app, users could find their favorite YouTubers and Instagram stars, join their “Tribes,” and create posts aimed at that particular influencer (henceforth known as a “Tribe Leader”). Then, according to Shimmur’s FAQ, “The Tribe Leader will see the MOST UPVOTED posts in their Tribe FIRST – so the more upvotes your post gets, the higher the chance that your favorite star will respond!”

“Community.” “Tribe.” All of these social media buzzwords give me the heebie-jeebies. Especially when COMMUNITY is in all caps.

So no. Ashton Kutcher did NOT give out his real life phone number. I know you’re all shocked.

h/t Wired