Ashton Kutcher has publicly shared his phone number to encourage fans to interact with him via text message.
The actor took to Twitter on Tuesday (29Jan18) and shocked his followers by posting his contact information and encouraging them to form a real connection with him.
"I miss having a real connection w/ real people. My Community. From now on you can just text me," the 40-year-old wrote. "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 Yes this is my# (sic)."
Unsurprisingly, Kutcher was overwhelmed with messages from fans and curious followers of his Twitter page. One journalist detailed what happened when she sent a text to the number, revealing she received an autotext response which read: "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."
The link was to a site called Community.com, which asked the reporter to leave her phone number and other personal details. While the homepage is relatively short on information, the Terms of Service explained 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 Terms of Service added 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."
Further digging discovered that Community is the new name of Shimmur, Inc., an app which launched in 2014 to connect social media celebrities with their followers. The details provided on Community suggest that Kutcher's decision to post his number was, in fact, a way of promoting the social media platform - his involvement in which is as yet unknown.
Hours later, Kutcher deleted the post - noting he had been overwhelmed by the response but reassured them he would re-engage with his audience soon.
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