I learned a couple of days ago that the rise of spam texts is in part due to a 2021 Supreme Court decision that narrowed TCPA's definition of an 'autodialer'.

Previously it had been interpreted as: "the Congressional intent of the TCPA was "to ban dialing from a database"". In contrast to the new ruling: "Sotomayor wrote that "Congress’ chosen definition of an autodialer requires that the equipment in question must use a random or sequential number generator."

Congress is going to get right on that though: "Senator Ed Markey, one of the authors of the TCPA ... announced the same day of the decision [2021] that they would be looking to introduce amended legislation to address the Court's decision."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Duguid