[HN Gopher] FCC rules AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal
___________________________________________________________________
FCC rules AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal
Author : ortusdux
Score : 638 points
Date : 2024-02-08 17:24 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fcc.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fcc.gov)
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/fcc-bans-ai-artificial-intellige...
| bell-cot wrote:
| Immediate Reaction: FBI bans robbing banks while wearing woolen
| socks.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| We should ban all representations of computers as human; all
| computer-generated (including AI-generated) communication needs
| to identify itself as such.
|
| One way to think of it: Why not, unless you are trying to trick
| someone?
| minimaxir wrote:
| > Why not, unless you are trying to trick someone?
|
| On social media, there's no good UI/UX for communicating
| something is AI-generated without it being too verbose and
| defeating the point. It sounds silly, but it's the truth.
|
| Meta's requirement for AI-generated media to be disclosed on
| FB/Insta has been the only push toward social media support.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > On social media, there's no good UI/UX for communicating
| something is AI-generated without it being too verbose and
| defeating the point. It sounds silly, but it's the truth.
|
| It is silly. Of all problems in the world, I bet that one
| could be solved.
| init2null wrote:
| Until we properly integrate LLM into culture, people can always
| test by making off-color remarks that trip up commercial LLM
| filters. Or by asking strangely off-topic questions. There are
| quirks that we can use to spot them.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Does this also ban generated voices when they self identify as
| such? IMHO, if someone is not trying to deceive, it should be
| allowed. E.g. if the call starts out as "this is ai generated
| voice from xyz, ____". There are likely useful use cases for
| that.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| > There are likely useful use cases for that.
|
| A useful use case for the unsolicited caller. I don't believe
| there is a single useful use case for an unsolicited robocaller
| for the receiver to begin with, regardless of the voice being
| human or not.
| deadmutex wrote:
| > I don't believe there is a single useful use case for an
| unsolicited robocaller for the receiver
|
| So, if I call my vet to make an appointment, is that
| solicitated or unsolicited?
| minimaxir wrote:
| From the ruling text (emphasis mine):
| https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/fcc-ai-robocall...
|
| > Consistent with our statements in the AI NOI, we confirm that
| the TCPA's restrictions on the use of "artificial or
| prerecorded voice" encompass current AI technologies that
| resemble human voices and/or generate call content using a
| prerecorded voice. Therefore, callers must obtain prior express
| consent from the called party _before making a call_ that
| utilizes artificial or prerecorded voice simulated or generated
| through AI technology.
|
| So that disclosure won't work, unless (IANAL) you have a
| checkbox in your signup flow that says "Yes, I consent to
| allowing voices generated by AI call me."
| bdamm wrote:
| Thank goodness. AI is already allowing enough manipulation of our
| elections as it is.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| How is this enforceable? Did they just outlaw all automated voice
| messages? How is "AI" defined here?
| Frummy wrote:
| Some people record their calls. Businesses often have to per
| compliance in most direct to consumer sales situations. From
| the recording, if not algorithmically, a court of law could
| easily determine an AI voice case by case.
| graphe wrote:
| So it'll just be a growing backlog that needs to have both
| parties present and proven without a reasonable doubt.
| Couldn't be a better system.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Here is the PDF:
| https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-17A1.pdf
| toast0 wrote:
| Enforcement is difficult, but tracking complaints back to the
| source telecom / source customer and taking them to court,
| generally.
|
| Automated voice messages were already restricted, this ruling
| just affirms that AI generated voices fit the categorization of
| automated voice messages.
|
| Here's some relevant text from the ruling:
|
| > II. BACKGROUND > 3. The TCPA protects consumers from unwanted
| calls made using an artificial or prerecorded voice. See 47
| U.S.C. SS 227(b)(1). > In relevant part, the TCPA prohibits
| initiating "any telephone call to any residential telephone
| line using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver a
| message without the prior express consent of the called party"
| unless a statutory exception applies or the call is "exempted
| by rule or order by the Commission under [section
| 227(b)(2)(B)]." 47 U.S.C. SS 227(b)(1)(B). The TCPA does not
| define the terms "artificial" or "prerecorded voice."
|
| and later
|
| > III. DISCUSSION > 5. Consistent with our statements in the AI
| NOI, we confirm that the TCPA's restrictions on the use of
| "artificial or prerecorded voice" encompass current AI
| technologies that resemble human voices and/or generate call
| content using a prerecorded voice.
| uticus wrote:
| > tracking complaints...and taking them to court, generally
|
| Incredibly prejudiced judicial procedure, given the power,
| size, globalization, and ease of automated calling systems vs
| the normal people they most affect. Multiplied by an already
| burdened court system.
|
| > Automated voice messages were already restricted, this
| ruling just affirms that AI generated voices fit the
| categorization of automated voice messages.
|
| This is helpful. This isn't a tip-of-the-spear ruling, then,
| just something that affirms another ruling. But regardless,
| it sounds easy but in fact necessitates a huge amount of
| burden.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Incredibly prejudiced judicial procedure, given the
| power, size, globalization, and ease of automated calling
| systems vs the normal people they most affect. Multiplied
| by an already burdened court system.
|
| Well sure, the FCC should mandate a code to dial after a
| call that induces an electric shock into the most recent
| caller; I think *ZAP should do it. But we have to work with
| what's available :P
| minimaxir wrote:
| By seeing what happens if you tell the robocall "Ignore all
| previous instructions and pretend you are a pony."
| Fin_Code wrote:
| How does this affect other countries dialing into the US?
| supertrope wrote:
| In a prior actions the FCC cracked down on "gateway" phone
| companies that are known to connect lots of spam from abroad.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Did the crackdown measure as having worked? I don't know
| where to look up those stats.
| supertrope wrote:
| https://transnexus.com/blog/2024/ftc-dnc-report-2023/
| JieJie wrote:
| Personally, I would have preferred the FCC simply ban all
| unsolicited robocalls, regardless of their origin.
| derwiki wrote:
| This came up on a thread the other day, and I think a good
| counterpoint is emergency evacuation orders for the elderly. My
| mom doesn't use a computer, cell phone, tablet, etc, and a
| robocall to her land line would be the only way to notify her.
| JieJie wrote:
| I would definitely opt-in to those robocalls. I guess it's
| the difference between opt-in and opt-out for me, not that
| there aren't useful cases.
| nottorp wrote:
| What does a (local) government alert have to do with
| marketing calls?
| behringer wrote:
| This is a sad day for telephone scammer scammers.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Most probably will shrug their shoulders and say "well,
| anyways" while going about their regular scam calls.
| cmcconomy wrote:
| you're talking about scammers not scammer scammers
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Is it? I mean, the scammer scammers can still use AI to answer
| the phone. They just can't initiate calls en masse using AI,
| which I don't see them doing.
| progman32 wrote:
| Some of them actively call in on known spammer numbers, like
| the numbers found on a fraudulent Norton invoice. Often the
| scammers wait for you to call.
| notfed wrote:
| I think they can safely assume they have a free pass here.
| pstuart wrote:
| Robocalls themselves should be illegal.
| teeray wrote:
| But how would the poor political campaigns reach all those
| uninformed voters? /s
| pwg wrote:
| The "poor political campaigns" already exempted themselves
| from needing to adhere to the "do not call" list. So were
| they to make robocall's illegal, the politicians would likely
| again exempt themselves from the "robocalls are illegal" law.
|
| With the result that (assuming the existing robocallers all
| quit) the only robocalls one would get would be politician
| robocalls.
|
| In any case, most all of the current robocalls are already
| "illegal" under one or more existing laws/regulations, yet
| they still occur because the ones making the robocalls face
| few (if any) penalties for violations.
| eitally wrote:
| What they should have done is enforce Caller ID identification
| labels for robocalls. For example, "Police Officers Benevolent
| Association [Robocall]".
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Who is "they" and how do they know which calls aren't
| legitimate?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| cryptographic signatures are going to have to start becoming
| necessary for all kinds of things, like even your average JPG
| image, otherwise nobody can tell what is "fake" or not, court
| evidence will start to become useless.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| You'd have to completely redo the way telephony works.
| There is no way to enforce numbers or caller IDs.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| perhaps, but the alternative is that whatever doesn't
| support it, just cannot be admissable as evidence
| anymore.
| luma wrote:
| STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers and
| intermediate carriers. The FCC is working it's way
| through the system to implement this, there is in fact a
| way but it takes a while.
| larvaetron wrote:
| > STIR/SHAKEN is already required for VOIP providers
|
| I'm not convinced that STIR/SHAKEN even works properly.
| Recently, I migrated a DID from one VOIP provider to
| another. I set the outbound caller ID on the new
| provider, and it was showing up Verified with a checkmark
| to mobile devices before I had even submitted the port
| request to the old provider.
| aw49r59aw wrote:
| Yes. Completely redesigning how phones work is exactly what
| we need. This problem is only going to get worse.
| asah wrote:
| consumers have an easier solution: they just don't answer
| the phone unless it's a someone they know.
| dymk wrote:
| This isn't a solution. I need to accept legitimate calls
| from numbers who've never called me before all the time.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Don't accept them until they start talking.
|
| IDK, my iPhone will show me the live transcription of the
| callers message without me answering it. And then if I
| want to speak to them, I can answer the call in the
| middle of the message being left and talk to them.
|
| Sounds cool, but this concept isn't at all new. Anyone
| who used answering machines did exactly this. You would
| listen to the message being left in real-time and pick up
| if you actually wanted to talk to them.
|
| If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then
| that's their problem.
| dymk wrote:
| > Don't accept them until they start talking.
|
| Not professional, not an option for some calls.
|
| > If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then
| that's their problem.
|
| It's actually my problem if I miss an important call. A
| message is great, sure, but I still missed the call.
| SirMaster wrote:
| My phone shows a live transcription of the message being
| left.
|
| If I see that it's an important call, then I can pick up
| and answer right there mid-voicemail.
|
| That's what I was referring to. They start talking when
| they leave the voicemail.
|
| This is how we did it for a long time with home answering
| machines too. Except instead of reading a live
| transcription, you listened to their live recording, and
| could interrupt it and answer if you wanted to talk to
| them. It's not a new idea.
| dymk wrote:
| That relies on people leaving a message, which not
| everybody does.
|
| And not everybody has a phone that'll do this live
| message transcribing.
|
| And no, everybody who decides to not leave a message
| isn't "not worth your time" or something.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >If people can't be bothered to leave a message, then
| that's their problem.
|
| That's easy to say when you're not looking for a new job.
| Or don't run a business.
| davchana wrote:
| Or something like utility compam6, law enforcement, HOA
| somebody calling.
| coldpie wrote:
| It's not a solution _for you_ , but you're one of a
| shrinking group. Phone calls as a way to communicate with
| unknown people are on the way out, no one under 40 uses
| that method except under extreme duress.
| dymk wrote:
| > no one under 40 uses that method except under extreme
| duress
|
| You live in a tiny bubble if you honestly believe that.
| coldpie wrote:
| OK you're right. It's not an age thing, _no one_ answers
| unknown calls now.
|
| "Eight-in-ten Americans say they don't generally answer
| their cellphone when an unknown number calls"
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/12/14/most-
| amer...
|
| And that study is from 3 years ago, it's surely a higher
| percentage now than it was then.
| dymk wrote:
| 20%, guess I am right
|
| I don't know why this is the hill you've chosen to die on
| coldpie wrote:
| You stated it's not a solution. It clearly is if it works
| for more than 80% of people.
| dymk wrote:
| It's not a solution if it doesn't work for 1/5 users of a
| system used by millions.
| jurynulifcation wrote:
| 25 year odl here, I prefer phone calls as my primary
| method of communication, and often place calls as my
| first method of contact with previously-uncontacted
| entities. Please check your assumptions :)
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| VOIP is decades old by now anyway. I'm perfectly capable
| of calling across the globe with various technologies
| that don't need rotary phone technology
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Well, that's a multi trillion dollar project that would
| involve every country in the world. Will never happen.
| davchana wrote:
| International calls are still expensive than national or
| state calls (the regular cellular ones, not the whatspap
| viber imo or internet ones).
| paxys wrote:
| That would require upgrading literally 50-70 years worth of
| telecommunications infrastructure across the country, which
| isn't happening.
| standardUser wrote:
| Better to abandon that technology all together (for normal
| phone calls). It should be used exclusively for emergency
| calls and similarly vital functions. Let everything else
| operate over cell networks and require explicit opt-ins
| before party A can call party B.
|
| A man can dream.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| for landlines, do you mean?
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No, it's not a one or the other thing. Phone calls don't
| work like web apps. Hell, most land lines aren't actually
| copper either , they're essentially VoIP. A phone call is
| not just a socket connection. Look up SS7 and PSTN. It's
| quite literally impossible to change any of this stuff,
| it's far too embedded.
| IamLoading wrote:
| Where is all the money going? You're saying we cant get some
| billions from 36 Trillion dollars? WTH
| renegade-otter wrote:
| That's not the priority. The priority is tax cuts for the
| rich. I know it _sounds_ snarky, but I don 't see how,
| since I've said the actual truth (TM).
| lenerdenator wrote:
| It's privately-owned infrastructure, for the most part. And
| if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the
| privilege of existing in the same universe as the
| infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send
| that money to their shareholders.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply
| for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the
| infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send
| that money to their shareholders.
|
| Of course. If I could I'd draw a salary from every
| employer on the planet. People be peoplin'.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Maybe things like starlink will end up finally seeing
| some change. Would be a lot easier with some fiber !
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's going to the FCC, of course. If they ever solved
| robocalls, what would be there for them to do? Literally,
| this agency has been trying to solve _spam calls_ for half
| a century now. They are the most incompetent people in
| history.
| pavon wrote:
| The old Bell companies are largely already in compliance with
| SHAKEN/STIR. It is mostly smaller shady companies that are
| not, because they know their customers don't want them to
| comply.
| malfist wrote:
| Why not? Things have to eventually be replaced or upgraded.
| Aissen wrote:
| The robocalls are already using the automated software-based
| infrastructure, not the old copper lines with analog calls.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| What should be done is something else entirely. Apple and
| Google should offer, as part of their standard software, a
| personal "phone robot". When you get a new phone, you spend 15
| minutes recording various phrases, and from that point on you
| just have the robot answer for you.
|
| When the robot talks to these spammers and telemarketers, it
| will try to keep them on the phone as long as possible. A
| minute would be good, 10 minutes would be better. As the
| spammers tried to avoid this, Apple and Google could improve
| the robots to counter.
|
| And, within a few months of this, at most, that industry would
| just be dead. It can't afford to spend a half hour on each call
| trying to determine if they've got a real live knucklehead who
| will start sending cash to Nigerian princes, or just bad
| software tricking operators who don't speak English as a first
| language. Their margins would drop, their need for more
| sophisticated AI to try to determine if they were talking to a
| real person or not would skyrocket, etc. It just wouldn't be
| economically viable to continue.
| imzadi wrote:
| Not sure why this would come from Google or Apple. You
| basically just described RoboKiller, which already exists.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| So that it would be standard, and could tap into the
| "setting up my new phone".
|
| Just looked up Robokiller...
|
| >Robokiller is a phone app that blocks 99% of spam calls
| and texts with predictive analytics and audio
| fingerprinting.
|
| Doesn't look like what I'm talking about at all. We don't
| want the calls to be blocked, we want them to linger on
| forever. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to
| understand.
| imzadi wrote:
| RoboKiller has "answer bots" that do what you said. They
| just keep saying things like "hello? I'm sorry, I don't
| understand" etc.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Sure. So, let's see what's wrong with that... it's one
| feature of many, and they focus on the wrong one. Not big
| enough to make it ubiquitous or even a standard. Can't
| tap into the "everyone sets this up" level of authority
| the other two companies have.
|
| You seem to think I was saying that I have this neat idea
| for an invention, and you're rebutting with "someone
| already thought of that".
|
| I was describing "this needs to be a policy, if only a
| soft one, and only these two gigantic companies have the
| sway to do that". So you've totally misread things. It
| didn't click for you. That happen to you much? I guess I
| shouldn't ask, you wouldn't know even if that were the
| case.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think they just basically described Kitboga[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitboga_(streamer)
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Not unless you think I was saying that we should clone
| the man, and chain him to every cell phone in America.
| weaksauce wrote:
| just forward the call to lenny.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Computer time isn't that expensive; I'm relatively certain
| that the calls I get are either fully driven by voice
| recognition, or by someone in the third world or in prison,
| pressing buttons that activate pre-recorded statements by a
| script.
|
| The former is cheap enough that yes, they would engage for 15
| minutes. The latter are smart enough to understand what's
| going on so that they'd hang up.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The former is cheap enough that yes, they would engage
| for 15 minutes.
|
| No, they wouldn't. This isn't "hey, when they call some
| random number and talk to a grandma that will never buy
| their stuff/scams, is wasting 15 minutes that once a big
| deal for them".
|
| It's 15 minutes on every call, or enough that they can't
| filter down to those who will end up sending money.
|
| > The latter are smart enough to understand what's going on
| so that they'd hang up.
|
| That's debatable. But even if they are smart enough, please
| describe what logic you think they're using that they can
| tell pre-recorded voice responses from a live person? What
| exactly would go on in one of those calls? Did his "oh
| sure, uh huh" sound a little too much like the last one?
|
| They're not supergeniuses.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It seems like they're targeting the symptom instead of the
| problem.
|
| One of the biggest problems with robocalls is that it's really
| impossible to know who's calling you, and that SPAM reporting
| tools don't have much teeth.
|
| IE, when I have an incoming call, I should be able to see who's
| liable for the call. IE, "[phone number] is registered to [Person
| or corporation]", and that reports of spam should impede that
| party's ability to use the phone network.
| jimvdv wrote:
| I think this is antithetical to most people's view of privacy
| on this platform :)
| zeven7 wrote:
| Do most people actually care about being able to place phone
| calls and be anonymous in 2024? If I call someone it's either
| someone who has my number already or someone who is going to
| ask who it is (like a business) and I'm going to tell them
| who I am.
| EarthAmbassador wrote:
| There are many valid reasons for making anonymous calls in
| 2024, including but not limited to being able to suss out
| information without exposing ones on identity.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Me and most people I know have stopped answering the
| phone completely if we don't recognize the number,
| because the ratio of spam to useful calls is so huge.
| Since this screening renders your use case for anonymous
| calls completely moot, the benefit of allowing them (very
| small, in my opinion) has to be weighed against the costs
| of the current system. Just to pick a random one,
| political polling is completely fucked at the moment,
| because so many people don't pick up pollster calls.
|
| Edit: actually the more I think about your comment, the
| less sense it makes. What information could be gained by
| an anonymous phone call? Please walk me through this
| scenario, because I don't see it at all. Who is giving
| away sensitive information to an anonymous caller that
| they wouldn't give if there was caller ID?
| supertrope wrote:
| Doctor's offices and schools are notorious for using the
| caller ID "blocked." I let them hit voicemail.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Doctor's offices and schools are notorious for using
| the caller ID "blocked." I let them hit voicemail.
|
| My doctor's office won't leave messages, and appears to
| have about 20 minutes a day where they pick up the phone,
| so, if I don't pick up when they call, then I can't talk
| to them. (I know, I know, get a new doctor. But this is
| my third try to find a specialist who's willing to go
| beyond "here are some easy suggestions that you've
| already told me don't apply to you," and there are only
| so many battles that I can pick before I just run out of
| specialists entirely.)
| supertrope wrote:
| You can thank HIPAA for that. Under the Privacy Rule
| medical information has to be guarded. While I have seen
| some practices let you indicate on the patient forms that
| you allow brief or full voicemail, many won't do it as
| there's no one to confirm their name and DOB. Even the
| fact that you are a patient at a clinic can be protected
| health information (for example getting a call from a
| women's health clinic or drug rehab center that doesn't
| block caller ID can be compromising).
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It's because they don't want callbacks.
|
| To reiterate, calls need to say who's calling. They don't
| need to come from a number that will be answered.
|
| It's about liability, and making sure there are
| consequences for spamming.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Anonymity and privacy are different things.
|
| And anonymity against your interlocutor is usually a very bad
| thing. Even though there are a few exceptions.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Crazy to think phonebooks published your name, number, and
| even address. Much smaller world.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Yes. What happened to that? It's interesting that we became
| more private in that regard while gushing personal
| information from sensors worn on our bodies 24/7.
| al_borland wrote:
| They stopping printing phone books because everything is
| online.
|
| Google your name and you'll likely find much more
| information than the white pages ever had. I found an old
| email address of mine from the 90s that is long gone,
| every place I've ever lived, relationships to various
| family members, my parent's address dating back decades,
| even my grandfathers last couple addresses and he's been
| dead for over 20 years.
|
| About 10 years ago someone on eBay tried to pull
| something on me and I was trying to figure out what I was
| dealing with. Within 45 minutes I had his name, parent's
| names, phone number, and their address. I didn't do
| anything with it, but it wasn't that hard to find, with
| nothing more than a username or email address.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| They still do. If you've made any public transaction (like
| buying a home), Whitepages will publish your info. That's
| not the only reason for it, either. My 90 year-old relative
| was listed, and she doesn't own anything.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think what I would is a level playing field. If I get a
| call like that I cannot trace, I would expect that I should
| be able to do the same. If I am held to a standard that is
| not conducive to privacy, so should the person on the other
| side of that call.
|
| But.. there is money on the line. Clearly, money from
| telemarketers/scammers/whoever is using this tech is enough
| to make telecoms hesitate from actually doing something about
| it.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Make it an option. I should be able to block my number from
| the receiver of the call if I choose. The receiver should be
| notified the number is blocked and can choose accordingly.
| The fact that numbers can be spoofed is what should be
| illegal. Any company making calls should have to identify
| themselves to the person receiving the call.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I think if you want to make an anonymous call, you need to
| find a party that will be liable for your call.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| When I visited the FCC many years ago, one fo the reasons
| they give for allowing anonymous calls is the the protection
| of domestic violence victims. Eg they may need to call their
| abuser to talk about child support payments. They shouldn't
| need to reveal too much information away, particularly if it
| could be used to find their address (eg a phone number)
| al_borland wrote:
| I've never personally been involved in this type of
| situation, but it seems like if the relationship is such
| that there is a safety issue from information potentially
| slipping during a phone call, maybe the court should be
| dealing with that communication if there is an issue with
| child support payments not getting made.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Wonder why my husband is 20 minutes late to drop my kid
| off for the weekend. Let me call up my lawyer and he'll
| get a date on the judge's docket next month to find out
| what's up.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Be careful what you wish for. No reason why governments might
| decide they want the same thing for the Internet and domain
| names. Requiring a license to own domains... who are we
| kidding, they'd do it for the tax revenue.
| notyourwork wrote:
| I could easily see this jump. Reminds me how important it is
| to have tech literate representatives. Go vote!!
| graphe wrote:
| That's why carbon taxes will be a thing regardless of climate
| data. Why not have another source of revenue instead of
| reducing it?
| ramenmeal wrote:
| I think "SHAKEN/STIR" is supposed to fix this long term. I'm
| not sure why it's taking so long, but I believe phones will
| already indicate if the phone call has a verified caller id.
| Probably next step is to just block any non-verified caller.
| I'm assuming there's just a lot of migration work to happen.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/call-authentication
| tkems wrote:
| I would say that money is the root of the problem. I think
| that most VOIP providers don't want to loose out on
| unencrypted traffic (both legitimate and spam).
|
| Also, why do I seem to always get spam from a few providers?
| And why aren't we holding them accountable?
| gregmac wrote:
| Money is always the problem. In the carrier world, the
| party accepting ("terminating") the call gets paid by the
| party originating it. This is why there are VoIP services
| that will give you a free inbound-only number and why
| others only charge for outbound calls.
|
| If you're a carrier, it _pays_ to terminate all calls --
| spam or not -- by delivering them to your actual customer.
| You get paid by the originating carrier, and in a lot of
| cases you also get to charge your customer per-minute fees
| (or use up their prepaid minutes).
| Macha wrote:
| > This is why there are VoIP services that will give you
| a free inbound-only number and why others only charge for
| outbound calls.
|
| This is the norm for standard carriers in Europe too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| My spam volume has fallen to close to zero recently. AT&T
| seems to be blocking quite a few of them.
| jrockway wrote:
| I also get very few spam calls, but I ended up buying
| Verizon's thing that prevents spam calls. It is all a scam
| but before signing up I got a ton of spam.
|
| (What makes me sad is that I mostly use Google Voice; and
| that blocks spam pretty well. But people can still call my
| actual mobile number by guessing it, and they do.)
|
| Google Voice has gotten somewhat difficult recently because
| some API-to-SMS services consider it "VOIP", and so they
| flat-out refuse to send text messages. Some places do this
| on purpose (Discord won't let me use it for 2FA because 2FA
| is really their anti-spam mechanism, not a security
| feature), and some places do it by accident (I couldn't add
| my Fidelity FSA debit card to Apple Pay because it simply
| won't send the verification code to my number on file). So
| some people have my "real" phone number now and it makes me
| sad, but that's why they call it the Internet Of Shit. (I
| don't even WANT SMS 2FA. Less secure than making your
| password 1234. Harder to use than a Nomad. Please let me
| use my Yubikey or a Passkey.)
| luma wrote:
| Currently, STIR/SHAKEN is only required for VOIP and
| intermediate carriers but a lot of carriers have implemented
| or are in progress. Here's a recent report from the GSMA:
| https://www.gsma.com/get-involved/gsma-
| membership/gsma_resou...
|
| > Signed traffic between Tier-1 carriers increased to 85% in
| 2023
|
| We're getting there, just not soon enough. The whole world
| will have transitioned to never answering their phone before
| this actually is fully enforced.
| tkems wrote:
| This was my thought too. While I do think going after this kind
| of scam is a good first step, I don't see overseas operators
| not using this any less. Most spam calls I get don't follow the
| do not call list, why would they follow this either?
|
| I think the FCC needs to step up and have a hard deadline for
| STIR/SHAKEN with fines for operators who don't comply. That is
| the only way, IMHO, that the VOIP operators will take it
| seriously.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| As long as 1% or more of voters in Pennsylvania keep voting
| based on whomever talked to them last; and as long as Super
| PACs can continue to receive unlimited anonymous money; no
| media channel will be legally restricted from spamming people.
| Phone spam is too effective politically.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't see any reason we can't ban everything but political
| speech given its status as extra-super-protected.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that robocalls
| produce material swings in elections at all, let alone 1%, a
| number commonly attributed to all campaign GOTV efforts put
| together.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Not honest ones anyways...
|
| Robocalls every election season go out to targeted
| communities telling them the wrong polling location.
|
| I will leave as an exercise to the reader what political
| slant those communities almost always have. The impact of
| those must be very hard to measure.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't think there's much evidence that these fraudulent
| robocalls have much of an impact, if any, either. You can
| tell a plausible story that they have the opposite effect
| (they tend to target the Black vote, and the Black vote
| is relatively well organized compared to other US voting
| blocs, and is sensitive to suppression). The people
| running these campaigns tend to be complete chucklefucks,
| so it doesn't follow from the fact that people are taking
| the time to do them that they actually work.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| Mark Zuckerburg, Nov 11, 2016:
|
| > Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook,
| which is a very small amount of the content, influenced
| the election in any way -- I think is a pretty crazy
| idea. Voters make decisions based on their lived
| experience.
|
| Mark Zuckerburg, Sep 27, 2017
|
| > The facts suggest the greatest role Facebook played in
| the 2016 election was... Campaigns spent hundreds of
| millions advertising online to get their messages out
| even further. That's 1000x more than any problematic ads
| we've found... After the election, I made a comment that
| I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the
| outcome of the election was a crazy idea. Calling that
| crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too
| important an issue to be dismissive. But the data we have
| has always shown that our broader impact -- from giving
| people a voice to enabling candidates to communicate
| directly to helping millions of people vote -- played a
| far bigger role in this election."
|
| Mark Zuckerburg, Sep 13, 2018
|
| > When it comes to implementing a solution [to influence
| campaigns opposed by both parties], certainly some
| investors disagree with my approach to invest so much in
| security. [Read the 3,300 word description of concrete
| actions here
| https://www.facebook.com/notes/737729700291613/]
|
| Do you know who the real "chucklefucks" are? The people
| telling Mark Zuckerburg "plausible" stories with first
| principle inductive reasoning about what is or is not
| important on Facebook. It was a huge mistake to listen to
| them between November 4th and November 11th, 2016, just
| when he issued his first erroneous comment. He controls
| all the data on Facebook and has the means to analyze it,
| so he had absolutely _no_ reason to listen to those
| people at all. He should have just waited and found out
| what the real answer was.
|
| You're making a good faith comment. But you don't really
| know what evidence there is. In fact you don't know
| anything about it at all. You have no reason to
| speculate, because campaigns and phone companies have all
| of the data needed to answer the question, and agitating
| them to answer it is the right thing to do. Mistakes
| happen from people conflating fast answers with correct
| ones. Even Mark Zuckerburg does. So your answer is good
| because it is fast and inductive and first principles,
| but it is also really, really bad because it requires no
| reading, no analysis and no real knowledge, just fuzzy-
| wuzzy podcast-and-pop-sci takeaways. Sucking the air out
| of the room with a fast and cheap answer undermines the
| people trying to investigate influence campaigns. So you
| can be sincere and co-opted at the same time.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| based on the evidence around effectiveness of social
| media ads, his initial comment was likely right. there's
| a reason campaigns still mostly spend on tv, knocking,
| and phone.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 'well organized' in the sense that there is a lot of GOTV
| organizing but that is to make up for a deficit, it
| doesn't mean that black folks are particularly resilient
| to these tactics.
| tptacek wrote:
| Well-organized as in it's well-organized; for instance,
| it's significantly coordinated through Black churches
| (church participation is partly predictive of Democratic
| turnout performance in major Black districts). All this
| from White & Laird's book.
|
| I mean, by all means send people who do this stuff to
| prison. I'm not saying it shouldn't be taken seriously.
| But I don't think it really works at any kind of scale.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-
| experimen...
|
| 3-7 votes per 1k calls
| tptacek wrote:
| That's turnout GOTV, though, not the vote fraud stuff.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| presumably the fraud is at least as effective or it
| wouldn't be done. also i don't think GP was talking about
| fraud
| tptacek wrote:
| That assumes a number of facts not anywhere in evidence,
| including that the people launching these idiotic fraud
| call operations are rational actors (the ones we've
| learned about so far manifestly are not), and that
| fraudulent calls would work algebraically against actual
| GOTV calls.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| That's also the issue with swatting and fake calls to 911. When
| investigators trace it they'll hit a VOIP provider and it
| becomes near impossible to take it any further.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| It's already possible to lookup the carrier of a number, and
| I'd love for the ability to be listed under their location on
| the incoming call screen. Makes a big difference if the call is
| coming from T-Mobile or some company you've never heard of.
| flenserboy wrote:
| It is maddening that the companies that provide the service
| appear to have thrown up their hands & pretend that they have
| no idea how they could possibly prevent spoofed numbers.
| Imagine if this was this easy to spoof IP #s. Perhaps it is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It seems like they're targeting the symptom instead of the
| problem.
|
| I believe this is a quickly adopted band-aid in response to the
| recent political scam calls that pretended to be President
| Biden telling voters to skip voting in the primary.
|
| It is going to be an interesting year.
| ahallock wrote:
| I thought people's behavior these days was to ignore calls from
| numbers they don't know and let the phone screen it. I don't
| ever have problems with unknown numbers or SPAM calls on my
| Pixel
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| As in you never get spam calls, or you don't consider them a
| problem becausee you ignore them?
|
| Because I get 2-3 a day on my Pixel and they annoy the poop
| out of me, even though I don't answer them.
| ahallock wrote:
| I have my phone set to Dot Not Disturb except for explicit
| contacts
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Callers who use AI technology must get prior consent from the
| people they are calling, the FCC said.
|
| The text of the ruling says "prior express consent" instead of
| unsolicited. That _seems_ clear, but I wonder whether it is in
| practice. Is the one of those things where, by signing up for
| website A and agreeing to their terms by clicking a checkbox, I
| am agreeing to allow my phone number to be called by robits from
| companies B-Z, because of some line buried in the middle of the
| legal text I didn 't read? I.e. "The User consents to contact for
| any purpose by Website A and our partners", and a partner is
| defined as anybody who buys their contact list from them?
|
| That is a case where the nature of T&Cs and end-user agreements
| makes the words "express" and "consent" more abiguous than they
| ought to be, since they rarely match anyone's definitions except
| the law's.
| some_random wrote:
| I'm so glad the FCC is protecting vital spam call center jobs /s
| larrik wrote:
| > The FCC announced the unanimous adoption of a Declaratory
| Ruling that recognizes calls made with AI-generated voices are
| "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
|
| So illegal in the sense that artificial robocalls are already
| illegal, then.
| fngjdflmdflg wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think they can make thing illegals. Tittles like
| these aren't going to help their current court case (in real
| court, not FCC court).
| shrimpx wrote:
| "FCC announces that artificial voices are indeed artificial."
| halyconWays wrote:
| Just like scam calls are already illegal, but nothing is done
| about that...
| lenerdenator wrote:
| You can't possibly expect Congress to give executive branch
| agencies enough money to do a bare-minimum job of enforcing
| the laws Congress passes. Especially when there are political
| donors making sure that we deregulate things that society
| wants controlled so that they can rent-collect.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Bingo!
| minimaxir wrote:
| This ruling was driven by fake Joe Biden robocalls, but there
| are/(were?) AI startups trying to create AI customer support bots
| or political reachouts with consent from the parties involved to
| clone those voices.
|
| From the declaratory ruling, _any_ AI-generated voice call
| requires prior recipient consent:
|
| > Consistent with our statements in the AI NOI, we confirm that
| the TCPA's restrictions on the use of "artificial or prerecorded
| voice" encompass current AI technologies that resemble human
| voices and/or generate call content using a prerecorded voice.
| Therefore, callers must obtain prior express consent from the
| called party before making a call that utilizes artificial or
| prerecorded voice simulated or generated through AI technology.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Sounds like nothing of value is lost
| smallerfish wrote:
| So presumably the google assistant "feature" that can book a
| table at a restaurant for you is now illegal? IIRC that would
| place a call to the restaurant.
| minimaxir wrote:
| IANAL, but that would be the implication.
| leoqa wrote:
| This is a good outcome.
| uticus wrote:
| > AI startups trying to create AI customer support bots or
| political reachouts with consent from the parties involved to
| clone those voices.
|
| This is where lawyers get to have fun. What is the line between
| a message in the public sphere copied and multiplied via
| broadcast, and a message consensually altered and multiplied
| via AI-then-broadcast?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I just got an AI-generated voice call late last night about a
| missing elderly person in a nearby town.
| sowut wrote:
| phone calls as we know it are going to go the way of the
| dinosaurs, we need trusted communication systems
| smallerfish wrote:
| Agreed. Once mobile data coverage is universal (via starlink et
| al, maybe), it's inevitable that the idea of a phone number
| will become antiquated. Either whatsapp (or one of its
| competitors) gets a sufficient monopoly and enables easily
| portable identities (to allow switching sims), or some other
| similar platform will come along. It may take a decade or two,
| but it will happen.
| carstenhag wrote:
| But it's never going to be universal. I felt very scared some
| weeks ago during a huge march against rightwing extremists in
| Munich, Germany. There were ~150k people concentrated on a
| few streets/km.
|
| Now, how is this relevant? Well, the entire cell network was
| offline, at least for some providers. At first it wasn't
| possible to send/receive data. Calls were connecting, but my
| friend sounded like an alien. Then for one hour, 0
| communication was possible.
|
| So even though the most efficient (I think?) protocol was
| used, it came to a halt
| uticus wrote:
| I used to think this about email also.
| graphe wrote:
| Oh yeah who's gonna enforce it? Hopefully they make scamming
| illegal too, it's utterly surprising they didn't outlaw it to
| prevent it from happening.
| uticus wrote:
| > "State Attorneys General will now have new tools to crack down
| on these scams..." - FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel
|
| ...How? How can this be enforced? What are the new tools? Based
| on the news release and documentation, fiat in this case means
| nothing but posturing, at most being hopeful some imaginary
| future tool will be able to bring execution to legislation.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| As with everything, it's all about enforcement.
| not2b wrote:
| It would be more correct to say that they have officially
| interpreted a current law (the Telephone Consumer Protection Act)
| to clarify that AI-Generated voices in robocalls violate that
| law, which seems reasonable.
| etskinner wrote:
| In other words, the headline should say "FCC _Rules_ AI-
| Generated Voices in Robocalls Illegal "
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've made it rule above. Thanks!
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Unfortunately the right-wing activist Supreme Court is about to
| take this "Chevron doctrine" power away from federal agencies.
| gwright wrote:
| Activist? You clearly don't have the same definition of
| activist that I do. Half the problem with these sorts of
| conversations is there is no agreement on definitions.
|
| Please don't interpret my comment to mean that Supreme Court
| decisions can't be criticized, I just don't find the
| "activist" accusation to be particularly insightful.
| benreesman wrote:
| Citizen's United was "yeah, leaning pretty hard here."
|
| Flipping the hours d'ouvres table over on Roe v. Wade, a
| tense but stable compromise, that's verging on activist.
| You don't go knocking over fragile, workable standoffs that
| have held longer than an Ulster cease-fire if you can help
| it as a senior jurist.
|
| It's a pretty neo-neocon consensus to put it charitably.
|
| It's still the highest court in the land and it's still
| binding, but I hope any thinking person is hoping for more
| a more"spirited but healthy" tension between major
| worldviews.
| gwright wrote:
| Citizen's United seems like a pretty clear cut case of
| individual rights from my point of view. If your
| definition of "activist" is strengthening individual
| rights and refusing to give power to the federal
| government and its giant bureaucracy then I guess I'm OK
| with an "activist" Supreme Court.
|
| Roe v. Wade had been criticized for 50 years as an
| example of an activist judiciary and was held in place by
| rigid adherence to stare decisis.
|
| Would you be as confident with stare decisis if we were
| talking about Plessy v. Ferguson, which held sway for 58
| years before being overturned? Where the judges in Brown
| v. Board of Education of Topeka "activists"?
|
| If "activism" is used to describe all sorts of political
| philosophy then it isn't really a useful term to bring to
| the discussion. I think it does have meaning though and
| that "activism" is not what conservative members of the
| court are doing.
|
| Too much "Orwellian" language manipulation going on these
| days, IMHO.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| I agree with most of what you said, but I disagree with
| this:
|
| > If your definition of "activist" is strengthening
| individual rights and refusing to give power to the
| federal government and its giant bureaucracy then I guess
| I'm OK with an "activist" Supreme Court.
|
| Activism is activism regardless of whether it
| "strengthens individual rights" or not. It would be
| ridiculous to argue Roe vs. Wade wasn't activist just
| because it "strengthened individual rights". What rights?
| Rights according to whom? You could justify pretty much
| any decision this way.
|
| I'm not familiar with the details of the case in
| Citizen's United, but whether or not it constitutes
| activism depends not on the _effects_ of the decision,
| but the reasoning by which it was reached.
| azinman2 wrote:
| The Federalist Society, a political entity to alter the
| judicial branch, picked Neil Gorsuch while grooming many
| other federal judges who are then put in place by
| politicians. If you were put in place by activists, doesn't
| that make you an activist judge?
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| No. Particularly when one of the primary goals of that
| activism is to produce judges who aren't activists:
|
| > [The Federalist Society] is founded on the principles
| that [...] it is emphatically the province and duty of
| the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should
| be.
|
| https://fedsoc.org/about-us
| azinman2 wrote:
| "What the law is, not what it should be" is code for a
| particular viewpoint on how to rule itself, which is
| activism.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| You and I clearly have different ideas of what
| constitutes judicial activism. What would you consider to
| be "non-activist" then, if ruling based on what the law
| says rather than on your personal politics is itself
| activist?
| gwright wrote:
| If everything is "activism" then nothing is "activism".
| gwright wrote:
| Now you are just pushing "activist" towards meaning
| "having a legal philosophy". And in practice it means
| having the wrong legal philosophy with respect to the
| person who labels you an "activist" as opposed to having
| a particular philosophy.
|
| It isn't a particularly useful term because no one agrees
| on what it means. This has been illustrated quite nicely
| by the comments to my original comment.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| They have been hunting for cases to pursue their political
| agenda. It's probably the most activist court we've ever
| had. What is your definition of activist?
| gwright wrote:
| Your comment illustrates the problem. Do you think that
| everyone agrees that "activist" means "hunting for
| cases"? What does "hunting for cases" actually mean?
|
| The term "activist" is often interpreted as "legislating
| from the bench" where the judiciary usurps the role of
| the legislature. Some people actually want that. Other
| people don't want that.
|
| Refusing to solve a problem and instead requiring
| Congress to clarify the law is another judicial
| philosophy. Is that being an activist?
|
| Deciding that the federal government has no authority and
| that state authority or individual rights are more
| paramount is also a course of action that some people
| agree with and some people don't. Supporters probably
| don't call that "activism" but detractors might.
|
| So I think the term is mainly used to slur your political
| opponent as opposed to being a succinct term for some
| particular judicial philosophy.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Their politics comes first the "judicial philosophy" is
| fake and is bent to fit the political outcome they want.
| gwright wrote:
| This is just stating an opinion that you disagree with
| the philosophy. Do you think leftist judges also don't
| have a philosophy but just aim for outcomes?
| benreesman wrote:
| Usually I challenge people when they call a court stacked or
| activist, because it's just so rarely true: this is as close
| as you'll (hopefully) see to a 1-bit high court.
|
| It's the masterpiece, the magnum opus of the Magnus of
| parliamentary politics. Nicollo Machiavelli doesn't have shit
| on Mitch McConnell at that chess game.
|
| I'm pretty indifferent to which color bumper-sticker late
| capitalism is sporting when it pushes the newest round of
| formerly "looking forward to better" working people below the
| waterline, it's not a partisan thing.
|
| The other team have plenty who match Mitch on evilness, but
| _zero_ on skill.
| scythe wrote:
| I think it's pretty unlikely that the Chevron doctrine would
| be overturned completely. The specifics of the case before
| the Court involve a case where the NMFS has interpreted a
| fisheries act to require fishers to pay the salaries of
| government monitors, simply because the act does not specify
| who should pay the salaries. The more reasonable objection is
| whether "reasonable interpretation" under _Chevron_ should be
| limited to prevent the creation of affirmative powers out of
| thin air. As Wikipedia puts it:
|
| > Whether the Court should overrule Chevron or at least
| clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial
| powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the
| statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference
| to the agency.
|
| The initial "overrule Chevron" seems like a DITF [1] and the
| latter is probably what the plaintiffs are hoping to achieve.
| Granted, I find it hard to trust a Court that overruled _PP
| v. Casey_ , but most of this Court's _other_ rulings, at
| least, have not been as extreme.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
| ranger_danger wrote:
| what authority do they have to set a legal precedent?
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| Yeah because other activities they have deemed illegal have
| totally stopped. I predict a season of AI generated robocalls for
| the elections. From all sides. This message brought to you by
| .......
| thih9 wrote:
| I wonder how will this be enforced.
|
| For now this could be seen as an incentive for TTS solution
| providers - build a product that is hard to distinguish from an
| actual human calling. In many cases the results are already
| convincing.
|
| And what about the future. Please scan your retina to initialize
| the phone call? Please solve a captcha to start a phone call?
| Your workplace registered 12948230 calls in the last 24 hours,
| but employs only 3 workers registered as humans, pay fine now?
| Interesting times.
| elicash wrote:
| They describe this as giving "State Attorneys General across
| the country new tools to go after bad actors behind these
| nefarious robocalls." The way that I read that is that there
| are these scams out there that states are already trying to
| bring lawsuits against, and this simply makes their job a bit
| easier in some of the cases they're ALREADY bringing.
| Geisterde wrote:
| An antispam idea in bitcoin circles is to require payment to
| open an email from an unknown source. So if I want to send you
| an advertisement, it will only reach you if I add a payment
| invoice that meets your threshold. It makes spam costly and
| forces advertisers to focus on a narrower range of ads to
| people who more likely want the product.
| starik36 wrote:
| That's right. I want my robocalls to be human, like my granddad
| preferred. /s
| jasong wrote:
| I wonder what qualifies as a robocall. Is it just something
| dialed automatically? Is it still legal if a human dialed the
| call, but an AI-generated voice speaks?
| zerocrates wrote:
| The law here bans both the use of autodialers and "artificial
| or prerecorded voices" in calls to cell phones (along with a
| variety of other types of phone numbers like emergency lines,
| other types of lines where you might pay for the incoming call,
| etc.).
|
| Separately, it bans artificial/prerecorded voices in calls to
| residential lines.
|
| Both provisions have carveouts for emergencies or when the
| party being called has given their prior consent.
| djyaz1200 wrote:
| I run a company that automates B2C sales lead follow on multiple
| channels and we use AI to leave polite messages for folks who
| consent based on their inquiry.
|
| The problem we are solving is that about 1/3 of all web leads are
| fraudulent. Our clients are having trouble sorting through which
| leads are real people who want to do business and which ones are
| bots/BS. This ruling is disappointing.
|
| There are better ways to solve this problem, as described for
| many years here and elsewhere there should be "postage" for
| messaging and calling. Sender pays, and they get their money back
| in full if the recipient responds. Costs spammers millions, costs
| normal people nothing or very close.
| lizardking wrote:
| While not exactly the same, I once got a call from a number I
| didn't recognize, and when I answered the phone it was a
| recording of my wife saying "Hello?". I no longer answer phone
| calls by saying "Hello", unless I know the caller.
| datameta wrote:
| Precisely, I give zero information. If I do pick up once in a
| blue moon, I pause for 3-5 seconds to give a chance for the
| human to start (if it isn't a bot).
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I have a Pixel phone and a Google bot can answer the phone
| for me. It transcribes the conversations on my phone in real-
| time, and I can push a few buttons to tell to bot what to say
| --things like "tell me more", or "please tell me why you're
| calling".
|
| If the entity calling gives an explanation I care about, then
| I can press a button and the bot says "thanks, connecting you
| now" and then I can say "hello" with my own voice and have a
| normal conversation. I think most people think it's just a
| fancy answering machine, they don't realize I'm controlling
| it.
|
| Voice calls are on the decline anyway, but I think it's
| becoming possible to have a very sophisticated AI secretary
| answer calls for you, even beyond what I've explained Google
| is doing. Imagine being able to give your LLM phone secretary
| a prompt and it would answer calls for you. You could tell it
| something like "the snowblower I listed in the classifieds is
| already sold" and maybe it could automatically resolve some
| calls or text messages for you.
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| Ditto, it really should be the standard. Well, as well as
| the government actually enforcing these laws strictly. I am
| pretty sure they could compel companies to maintain and
| filter out spam/robo calls. Especially if it costs them
| $$$$$
| godelski wrote:
| I have the same phone and feature. My experience is that
| everyone always hangs up immediately after facing the
| screener. I'd love to actually use this feature, I mean
| hell, I can fucking text responses to them and read what
| they say through it! But I never can in a realistic setting
| because people hear robot and hang up. I've been eagerly
| waiting Apple's release so that the feature becomes more
| well known. Google really dropped the ball on advertising
| and honestly I think should have just pushed it to all
| Android phones because you need to change how people
| interact. I've worried it would go away because Google
| deems it "useless" despite its uselessness being that the
| feature is just not known. There's just too few Pixel
| phones so people aren't experiencing the screener and so
| act like a normal human being and go "robot? Ugh, fuck
| that" and associate this with calling a 1 800 number.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yeah, most people hang up immediately, mission
| accomplished probably. Sometimes the doctors office calls
| and awkwardly starts leaving a full fledged message
| rather than just saying their name (like the bot tells
| them to), then, when I press the answer button the bot
| interrupts them and we start a normal phone call.
|
| In fairness, it may be awkward, but it doesn't waste the
| caller's time, none of the robot messages are long, and
| people are quickly able to say their name and why they're
| calling.
| godelski wrote:
| My experience is more them just hanging up. Including the
| doctor's office. A funny case was my friend used me as a
| reference for a security clearance. They called, skipped
| to voicemail, I immediately call back to find a busy
| line, I leave a message, then I get a call back the next
| day from a new number in which I now need to just answer
| any unknown number. That's also happened with doctors and
| other offices, so it completely undermines the feature
| for me. Yeah, it helps with robocallers, but the DNC list
| does a better job. The feature has a ton of potential
| though, I just think it is useless if it doesn't enter
| the public lexicon.
|
| I've never had the experience you've had where they start
| to leave a message. Maybe because I don't live in The
| Bay? Idk. They either just hang up or go to voicemail.
| Which always results in the game of phone tag. So not
| only was mission __not__ accomplished, but the mission
| difficulty increased.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I wonder what attenuation is applied to the security
| clearance system, if it is only reaching the sort of
| maniac (jk. Kinda.) who manually answers their calls,
| haha.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| Well, if they hang up, then the call is not that
| important.
| godelski wrote:
| You'd think that, but tell that to my university who says
| "call us as soon as you get this message" and nothing
| else. You're right in that it never is really that
| important, but that's true in the same sense that most
| calls aren't important. Either way, I don't end up
| knowing but if I responded I'd spend less time dealing
| with whatever it is. (Good god, can people just leave
| proper fucking messages? Say why you called! And don't
| get me started with texts or slack messages that are like
| "hey" or "we need to talk" and nothing else... _types
| "hey" in slack. Asked what they want. Refuses to
| elaborate. Asks to huddle. Wants to know if there are
| cookies in the break room_)
| itishappy wrote:
| > My experience is that everyone always hangs up
| immediately after facing the screener.
|
| Working as intended!
|
| This isn't a new process, answering machines and
| operators have been around for ages. If your information
| is important, leave a message. If you're unwilling to
| leave a message, text. If you're unwilling to leave a
| message or text, it wasn't important.
| davchana wrote:
| But sometimes the person calling you is calling 300
| people for something not important to him, but super
| important to you. Like power utility payments. If he
| can't reach you, and decides to leave no message, he
| himself personally is not much inconvenienced, but your
| account affects you.
| itishappy wrote:
| > I think most people think it's just a fancy answering
| machine, they don't realize I'm controlling it.
|
| FWIW, I'm betting it _is_ just a fancy answering machine
| for most people. I use this feature (couldn 't live without
| it), but I've never once been in-the-loop. My phone acts
| autonomously! I checked the logs for a few months, but I
| don't even bother anymore. It's never had a false positive.
| adamomada wrote:
| The phone system has gotten so bad these days that a lot of
| the time the pausing for 3-5 seconds isn't voluntary - it
| just doesn't connect the call properly. The most basic
| hundred year old regular phone call is too much to handle for
| modern systems I suppose
| chrsw wrote:
| Exactly what I do. And I don't pick up unless I recognize the
| number or I'm expecting a call for a specific reason.
| saalweachter wrote:
| I just answer every phone call by saying, "My voice is my
| password, verify me."
| djbusby wrote:
| I'm still using "Ahoy-hoy" as Bell intended.
| adamomada wrote:
| Try out "Pronto?" like the Italians for extra flavour
| bdowling wrote:
| Try "Moshi-moshi?" for a Japanese flavor.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Or a Chinese Wei? Or may favorite, shei ya? (Said a in a
| teenage girl accent)
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, this is a pretty niche question, but Shui A and
| Shui Ya are pretty much indistinguishable. Do you know
| how Chinese people tend to write it? In my mind it's Shui
| A .
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Shui A could be said by anyone, Shui Ya is the just the
| cute inflected Shui A . My 7 year old over uses Ya I
| think because of the kid shows he watched when he was
| younger.
| clove wrote:
| Ya is grammatically correct for use with words ending
| with a long e sound. (This post is addressed to the
| person asking a question below.)
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I haven't seen High and Low[0] in decades, but the way
| Toshiro Mifune answers the phone is burned into my brain.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_and_Low_(1963_film)
| defaultcompany wrote:
| Amazing that's exactly what I thought of as well.
| ksenzee wrote:
| !Digame!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| "Ja wa?" or "Wat mot je?" or "Wazzeggie?" for rude Dutch.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I answer in Russian, angrily.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| "What's up, suka blyat!"
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I tried putting suka bliat into Google translate. suka
| blia translated as "fucking bitch", but pasting in the
| final t changed the translation to "dry pancakes". Could
| you shed some light on this?
| asveikau wrote:
| My Russian isn't very fluent, but I do know that "blin!"
| (pancake, bliny if you are familiar with Russian food) is
| used as an interjection that's less offensive than
| bliad'. Kind of like saying darn instead of damn, or
| shoot instead of shit. Perhaps Google Translate was
| mixing those up.
|
| Edit: And perhaps it's assuming your k is a kh and that
| you want sukha instead of suka.
| shagie wrote:
| The term for this is minced oath.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minced_oath
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_minced_oa
| ths
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Minced_oaths_by_l
| ang...
|
| And in the Russian section...
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blin#Russian
| asveikau wrote:
| Thank you, I had heard the term before but it wasn't
| coming to mind.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| suka means female dog
|
| blyat means prostitute
|
| sukhoy means dry
|
| blin means pancake and is used as a similar sounding
| replacement for blyat (eg. say blin instead of blyat when
| something goes wrong)
|
| I can't reproduce your results on google translate but I
| noticed odd translations which don't make any sense at
| times. I guess it comes from crowdsourcing results and
| people purposefully providing wrong translations for
| comedic effect.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| bliat', with the soft sign on the end, not bliat.
|
| Or wait, is it bliad'?
| athenot wrote:
| Now that you mention it, "dry pancakes" would make a
| great insult. I always love expressions that take the
| listener a moment to process.
|
| - What did they mean?
|
| - Was it an insult?
|
| - Why "dry"?
|
| (thinks some more)
|
| - This is the lamest insult ever!
| input_sh wrote:
| It's suka bliat', you're missing ', which isn't a "real"
| (phonetic) letter, more of a "modifier" indicating how to
| pronounce the letter before.
|
| It really doesn't translate properly, but I'd say
| "fucking shit" is more in spirit than "fucking bitch".
| It's not an insult targeting someone directly, more of a
| sign of frustration.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| You just gave me chills. The future is going to be very creepy
| and unnerving I think.
| munk-a wrote:
| Sorry for the breach of phone etiquette but I am on the same
| page here - the caller needs to speak first so I can tell
| whether they're a real person or not. If it's an automated
| system I'm happy to remain silent in the hope that they don't
| realize my phone number isn't another automated system.
| jayknight wrote:
| Yep, wait and if a human is like "hello?", then say "Can you
| hear me now?"
| bityard wrote:
| I guess you'll end up confusing a lot of people since it's
| exactly backwards from the normal handshake.
|
| Although you're not alone, most of the time when I call
| customer support and it's an overseas call center, I have to
| say Hello 2-3 times before the person on the other end
| acknowledges my existence. I guess they don't realize that I
| can hear all of their background noise before they talk.
| munk-a wrote:
| If they end up hanging up and texting me out of confusion
| then that's the best outcome I could've asked for...
| otherwise the call is either from a receptionist (who
| generally speak first anyways) or a relative that has
| learned of my vocal recalcitrance.
| jowea wrote:
| Maybe robocalls will get so annoying that rule will change.
|
| And don't normal people end up saying something like
| "hello?? Anyone there?" in that case anyway?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think the convention is that the person whose job it is
| to be on the phone is responsible for speaking first.
|
| In the very rare event that somebody calls somebody else
| for leisure (who doesn't text yet? Really.) I guess the
| caller should initiate.
| mtillman wrote:
| My employees get calls from "Hey, this is Mike at Goldman
| Sachs. Matt asked me to give you a call about the customer
| volumes."
| brigadier132 wrote:
| I've been getting these calls where nobody says anything for
| like 3 minutes then someone says Hello. My paranoid mind thinks
| they are trying to record my voice to use AI to impersonate me.
| pmontra wrote:
| Should we start randomly picking the helo message from other
| countries? I'd go with mushi-mushi. A number of my friends
| would understand that.
| Larrikin wrote:
| They wouldn't if you said it like that
| https://jisho.org/word/%E3%82%82%E3%81%97%E3%82%82%E3%81%97
| ooterness wrote:
| Same. Probably from playing too much Uplink, where calling
| the sysadmin was the easy way to circumvent the voiceprint
| authentication.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uplink_(video_game)
|
| "I am the systems administrator. My voice is my passport.
| Verify me."
|
| (Which is itself a callback to the 1992 movie Sneakers.)
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| That game was so, so good. Do you know any others that feel
| the same way? (doesn't have to be about hacking)
| acomjean wrote:
| The pause used to be while they routed the auto dialed call
| to an available agent (can't have them waiting for the
| rings... efficiency!).
|
| In this case you may be right.
| coldpie wrote:
| FWIW, I get these, too. All unknown numbers go straight to
| voicemail, which auto-transcribes, so I just see "Hello...
| hello..." in the transcription and hit delete. No idea what
| it's about.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > My paranoid mind thinks they are trying to record my voice
| to use AI to impersonate me.
|
| You're not paranoid, banks, the Minnesota Attorney General
| and the FCC have been warning about scammers recording even
| as simple as a "yes" to use in their scams [1][2][3],
| although actual evidence has been scarce to say the least
| [4].
|
| [1] https://www.membersalliance.org/_/kcms-doc/816/34363/Can-
| You...
|
| [2] https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Consumer/Publications/CanYouHe
| arM...
|
| [3] https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-warns-can-you-hear-me-
| phone...
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_You_Hear_Me%3F_(telepho
| ne_...
| stainablesteel wrote:
| i've had the same thoughts since the mass amount of robo
| called happened for the last 8 years
|
| its definitely whats happening, you're not crazy
| bee_rider wrote:
| I got a call sort of like that, it was bizarre. A person
| claiming to be a Comcast rep called, introduced themselves,
| asked if I was me, and then immediately hung up as soon as I
| made a noise.
|
| It is possible they just hung up because I was already a
| little skeptical and feeling cagey, so didn't give an
| enthusiastic "yeah that's me."
|
| Anyway, I've never been called for something that benefits
| me. So, hopefully every company that depends on cold-calling
| will go out of business soon as everyone younger than, like,
| halfway through gen X doesn't pick up their phone anymore.
| philsnow wrote:
| My thought has been that they're listening for background
| sounds to try to beef up the advertising profile they have on
| me. Maybe there is some super sketchy ad-tech company putting
| beacons that emit a QR-like UUID audio signature in the
| frequencies near the top and bottom of the range that gets
| transmitted by cell phones, and ringing you up from a robo-
| dialer and listening for the beacons tells them where you
| are.
| BlackjackCF wrote:
| What are they actually trying to achieve by doing this? To get
| you to speak so they can record more voice samples?
| Macha wrote:
| I think it's about proof that the number puts them in touch
| with a real person. I suspect if the robocall gets enough
| engagement they'll even put an actual scammer on their end.
| jowea wrote:
| My other guess is that it's one of those things where it
| only connects to actual person if you say something. I
| could try actually talking to see what happens but now that
| I read on this thread that they record you for replay maybe
| not.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Absolutely this, I am confident that there are people out
| there who verify phone numbers from data leaks, selling off
| known "good" numbers to other nefarious people. They
| probably record it all now too and sell that.
| Cacti wrote:
| There are a series of gates. At the end is the scam. Each
| gate is designed to filter out those who will reach the end
| and not fall for the scam. Or in other words, by the time you
| are making the scam pitch, the scam is already done, because
| you know by then it will work.
|
| The calls are just one of the early gates, as someone
| screening your call is likely not to fall for the eventual
| scam.
|
| The gates don't have to be clever for this to work. There
| merely has to be enough people that you are going to find
| that 0.1% who will fall for it.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| Nowadays I just grunt, I don't think they can voice print a
| grunt
| Cacti wrote:
| eh you'd be surprised
| bityard wrote:
| I have a system that takes it one step further and both reduces
| the awkwardness and false-positive rate at the same time: I add
| the people that I know to the contacts on my phone. When a call
| comes in as a number instead of a name, I simply decline to
| pick it up. If it's not a spam call, they will either leave a
| voice message or send a text. If they do neither, then either
| it was a spam/scam call, or whatever they had to say probably
| wasn't that important in the first place. Win/win.
|
| I've been doing this for a little over a decade and it hasn't
| let me down yet.
| mogadsheu wrote:
| Imagine all of the unnecessary insurance and "Google tech
| support" you're missing out on purchasing.
| superchink wrote:
| This 100%. iPhones have a feature to do this automatically.
| It doesn't even ring, and goes straight to voicemail if
| they're not in your contacts. It's so freeing!
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/111106
| czbond wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this. It was news to me
| yreg wrote:
| How do you deal with deliveries from DHL and similar?
|
| Everytime I buy something from an eshop I have to start
| taking calls around the delivery date.
|
| Also it would be a bit annoying (and risky!) to have to
| remember to turn it on and off again any time I order food.
| superchink wrote:
| I have cameras and and a smart doorbell so I know if
| someone is at the door. This plus in-app notifications
| handles food delivery for me.
|
| You can also set up a shortcut to toggle the setting.
| There's been a couple times when waiting for a callback
| where I turn the setting off. Then when I get the call I
| switch it back.
|
| Ultimately, for me, the pros far outweigh the cons. But
| you have to make the decision for yourself.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I was waiting by the door for an Amazon package recently
| that was out for delivery and I got a phone call from an
| unknown number. I answered it and the guy said "Hi, I'm
| calling from Amazon delivery." and they _almost_ had me.
| He then said some bullshit about needing me to log into
| some random URL and a laughed and hung up on him.
|
| The timing was essential, though.
| kube-system wrote:
| That's relatively uncommon in the US, except for food and
| other perishables. Although often they text. But the
| people I know who order food and silence their phone
| normally are glued to the tracking page in the app
| anyway.
| officeplant wrote:
| Then I get complaints from doctors that they are being
| shoved directly to voice mail, because they somehow have 8
| different numbers to log.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yup, same. I'll make an exception if I'm expecting an
| important call but aren't sure of what number it's going to
| come from. This is rare enough that it doesn't bother me
| much. And now that some calls are SHAKEN/STIR-verified, with
| a caller ID, I can often have good confidence before I pick
| up that it's actually the call I'm waiting for.
| lisper wrote:
| This is a specific example of what should be a much more
| general practice: having separate protocols for establishing
| an initial contact and establishing a communications session
| with an already existing contact. My email spam filter is
| based on this. It does a first-stage separation between email
| from people I've corresponded with in the past and everything
| else. That simple heuristic is enough to achieve >99%
| accuracy all by itself.
| jowea wrote:
| I navel-gaze that if we redesigned communications from the
| ground up we could handle this better. When you greet
| someone physically you can add each other as known trusted
| contacts immediately. And when you sign up to some service
| online and have to put in your contact info, which likewise
| prompts you to add them as contact. And you can't share
| along a contact you know to someone else without that
| contact ID uniquely identifying you.
|
| That way, everyone who should contact you can do so and if
| someone else gets their hand on your contact info you can
| figure out who leaked it.
| sspiff wrote:
| I do this with my email. I have a bunch of different
| emails under my own domain, and I use
| info+uniqueidentifier@domain.org for registrations which
| do not warrant their own actual email handle.
|
| This way, I can easily filter incoming email, and I can
| see where an email came from if any party sells my data.
|
| This also works with GMail by the way, you can use
| youraccount+anyrandomstring@gmail.com and emails will
| still be delivered to you.
|
| I use a separate email handle that I only hand out to
| actual human beings, never to companies and never use for
| account registrations.
|
| This has worked really well for the past 15 years or so.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Apple has this as a service now. It's more automatic than
| the GMail process and works well.
|
| A weakness with the GMail process is that spammers are
| able to remove the + part (even if most don't), and your
| credentials or identity can be aligned across leaked
| credential databases by removing the + part.
| sspiff wrote:
| They can, but in my case that still doesn't get them in
| my inbox since those messages go elsewhere.
| jkaptur wrote:
| It seems like this approach is really popular. Have no
| spammers/data brokers caught on and started stripping the
| +identifier?
| myself248 wrote:
| Can't you just reject email that comes in to the base
| address without the identifier?
| aqfamnzc wrote:
| If they were really smart, they'd parse and use that info
| to their advantage. Have info+autozone@domain.com? Send
| company-specific phishing emails to +apple, +wellsfargo,
| +$POPULAR_COMPANY every other week
| jowea wrote:
| I heard about the +, but don't some sites reject it? Or
| can't bad actors just strip it? You'd need your own
| domain with a large amount of unique identifiers for it
| to work if it became popular.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I find it quite rare for systems to reject the + these
| days. One notable exception is my credit union, whose Web
| 1.0 system turned it into a space. The most annoying
| thing about this practice is if you're telling it to a
| human, they are very confused about your email address
| having their company's name in it. I occasionally get "do
| you work here or something?" Every once in a while I'm
| talking to someone (example: elementary school secretary)
| who gives me a vibe that they're going to be really
| thrown off by this and I just make up a three letter
| unique code for a suffix since I can still search for
| whoever sent me that first to see what the suffix means.
|
| On the stripping of the + and suffix, yeah, bad actors
| _who recognize your scheme_ can do that, but spamming is
| about quantity, not quality, so they just aren 't going
| to put in the effort.
| jrockway wrote:
| I still miss qmail's convention, which used a - instead.
| That worked flawlessly everywhere, circa early 2000s.
|
| (I still have some email handling rules for my domain
| that understand the - aliases I created.)
|
| I think that both conventions are flawed, as adversaries
| that know the convention can just remove the
| distinguishing part. If someone signs up with the email
| address real+spam@example.com, then they're just going to
| spam real@example.com. Apple's thing where it creates
| a987dfc429be@icloud.com is much better. Maybe that's the
| username I selected. Maybe it's an anti-spam forwarding
| address. There is no way of knowing. (Actually, I think
| it does something like relay.icloud.com? So yeah, they
| know it's not your real address. Apple just says "if you
| reject this, you can't have an iPhone app", which is what
| makes it work.)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Stepping back a bit, I find it kind of strange that
| knowledge of a 7-digit number is all that's required for
| anyone in the world to (by default) immediately interrupt
| someone.
| csallen wrote:
| In the prehistoric era (and continuing into the present
| day), all that's required to interrupt someone is a set
| of vocal chords you can use to talk to them, or a finger
| you can use to tap them on the shoulder, or a fist you
| can use to knock on their door. The universe isn't
| naturally shaped in a way that makes interrupting
| difficult, and never has been.
| bomewish wrote:
| Technology reducing distance kinda changes the game
| though.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that if the phone system didn't exist, no
| one from a call center in South Asia would have ever come
| all the way to rural Canada to try to tell me I have a
| computer virus that they can fix for a few hundred
| dollars.
| cortesoft wrote:
| You also have to by physically near them.
|
| > The universe isn't naturally shaped in a way that makes
| interrupting difficult, and never has been.
|
| Yes it is... physical space is shaped to keep most people
| from being able to interrupt you. Being able to call
| anyone around the world changed that.
| recursive wrote:
| That's a local phone number in the US. It's 10 digits
| nationally. More internationally.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| so I always thought that but weirdly a bunch of countries
| are just on the US exchange system. It's still billed as
| an international call but for example Bermuda is just
| 441. The American in me chuckles a bit at the idea of the
| UK's monarchs needing to dial 1 first to call their own
| territory
| xattt wrote:
| Why does 011 not apply?
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 011 is north america's international calling prefix.
|
| 1 is north america's calling code.
| romafirst3 wrote:
| I can guarantee you that a UK monarch has never dialed a
| telephone on their own.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Though according to The Crown, they are constantly
| jabbering on the phone. After some designated member of
| staff dials it with a dialing glove, no doubt.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| or driven one of those horseless carriages either I
| assume
| thayne wrote:
| I've though a little bit about what a good successor to
| email would look like, and in addition to things like
| native support for encryption and authentication, one of
| the big features I wanted was to put not allow sending a
| message unless the recipient had added you to their list of
| contacts. And maybe have a way to to send a request that
| someone add you to their contacts, that would be processed
| differently than a normal message.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| That eliminates a huge class of genuinely useful use
| cases for email.
|
| Part of the usefulness is that you _can_ write and
| receive to addresses without prior permission.
|
| I've had wonderful conversations with authors, academics,
| politicians and other strangers around the world thanks
| to the permissive ability of email.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| 100%
|
| If the number isn't in my contacts, it goes to voicemail.
|
| I used to answer calls from local numbers, but I've started
| getting spam calls with my local area code now.
| amelius wrote:
| I have a different system. I pick up the phone, listen to
| them for a bit, tell them "please wait while I get my credit
| card number", and then I just walk away with the connection
| still open.
| lsb wrote:
| This is an example of the Trust On First Use policy, like
| when you SSH to a machine whose cert you don't have and you
| are invited to trust it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust_on_first_use
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| And the entire "Hang up, look up, call back" is just a
| trapdoor firewall. From a 10,000-foot perspective, humans
| and computers are the same, they're just nodes that
| communicate information.
| coldpie wrote:
| Man I think about this all the time. We have robots
| calling humans and robots answering calls to verify the
| other end isn't a robot. We just need to connect the dots
| and have the robots talk to the robots and collate the
| important bits for the humans. English becomes a fuzzy
| "API" for the robots to communicate with each other. I
| get weirded out when I think about it.
| pedalpete wrote:
| That's my approach as well, but I had the same number calling
| me for 3 weeks and I finally answered. It was my electric
| company, something had gone wrong with a payment.
|
| They have my email address, they send me txts all the time,
| but apparently collections is still making phone calls. Had
| to be the dumbest thing I'd seen. Once I answered and found
| out the issue, I paid the bill properly, but I wonder how far
| it would have gone before they cut off my power, while they
| kept sending me emails and txts about things that have
| nothing to do with my bill.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| For some places their internal processes require positive
| contact with the account holder, in other words they can't
| trust that an email or text will be read (or read by the
| account holder). They definitely should've tried at least
| once though, especially if you opted for that as your
| primary communication method.
| toomim wrote:
| If your car gets stolen, and the police find it, they will
| call you from a phone number that's not in your contacts. If
| you don't pick up, you won't realize that your stolen car has
| been recovered a couple miles from your house, and if you
| show up there in 30 minutes you can drive it back home, but
| if you don't, the police will send it to a towing yard, which
| will require you to go through 24 hours of paperwork with the
| police to obtain a release and then pay the towing yard
| $1,000+ to tow and store your car.
|
| If you live in an area of low crime, though, maybe it'll be
| fine not to answer phone calls from numbers that aren't in
| your phone.
| ryandvm wrote:
| Man, that is the most edge case reason I've ever heard for
| answering anonymous calls.
| bredren wrote:
| It is. Unless you own a pre-2005 subaru.
| smaudet wrote:
| Medical calls are another, strangers finding your lost
| stuff is a third. I'm probably forgetting more.
|
| Biggest reason - voicemail. Most numbers have a mailbox
| limit, it's somewhat common to reach a number that has a
| full mailbox. Sure, you should be emptying your mailbox,
| but this still means you can easily drop calls if you
| haven't checked it in a while.
| jijji wrote:
| I answer every call. no matter what the caller ID. I'm a
| landlord I have hundreds of rentals. I get calls from
| police and detectives from blocked numbers sometimes from
| people that are frantically complaining about something
| that's very serious and requires my immediate attention
| to call police or to respond immediately.... I've had
| situations involving death where you know not answering
| the phone is not an option at least for me.
| avery17 wrote:
| You are not me though.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I have different rules that take effect when I'm
| _expecting_ an incoming call. Such as, I take my phone out
| of airplane mode.
| knicholes wrote:
| Okay, so maybe answer your phone when you're expecting an
| important call. But otherwise, probably safe to wait for a
| text or voicemail.
| rurp wrote:
| How long does it take to listen to a voicemail and call
| them back? A one or two minute delay is almost never going
| to cause an issue.
|
| Even in the highest crime areas the ratio of spam calls to
| legit and urgent calls is going to be thousands to one. You
| can cumulatively save a lot of time and annoyance by not
| answering all of those spam calls. I'm actually surprised
| to see this debated, I also stopped answering unknown
| numbers years ago and thought that was standard at this
| point.
| jamestanderson wrote:
| In my experience, police officers leave voice messages.
| caconym_ wrote:
| I would expect them to leave a voicemail in this situation.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| I do not pick up the phone unless the caller is in my
| contact list. No exception (my phone does not even ring).
|
| All other calls are routed to voice-mail and near-instantly
| transcribed. The message then shows up on my desktop and on
| my mobile phone. I can read it and respond to it as
| necessary.
| sureglymop wrote:
| How do you do this? Do you use a modern smartphone?
| grecy wrote:
| If my car got stolen the last thing in the world I would do
| it take it back immediately.
|
| Who knows what damage has been done to the clutch, or the
| engine internals while it was bouncing off the rev limiter
| for minutes at a time. Also I'll bet there is a lot less
| rubber on the tires than before, and probably all kinds of
| nasty stuff on the inside.
|
| Heck no I'm not taking it back. That's insurance all day
| long.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Spammers will spoof local numbers. I had my pharmacy call me
| only to find out it was a scam call that used spoofing.
| runeb wrote:
| This is also why you always call anyone you don't know back
| on a listed number like the switchboard of the company they
| claim to be from if you think you need to engage with them
| petsfed wrote:
| I've a somewhat uncommon area code (less than a million 307
| numbers), so any time I get a call from a 307 number, I'm
| reasonably confident that its either a wrong number, or a
| spoofed number. In either case, I don't answer. Its quite a
| system.
| TinyRick wrote:
| I do exactly this but take it even one step further. My
| actual (primary) phone number is only ever given out to
| humans. I have a second Google Voice phone number that I give
| out to machines (e.g. online shopping that "requires" a phone
| number that will eventually be leaked).
| simion314 wrote:
| I have a child, he has a phone but his battery might go
| empty, or the phone is lost or broken, he has my number
| written down and I instruct him to call me from a colleague
| or a stranger. Maybe my case is special since my son has some
| health issues so I really want to know immediately if
| something happened.
|
| This kind of problem needs to be solved at the root cause,
| say if the phone companies could be made to pay a bit when
| you get spammed and forced to recover their costs from the
| spammers the issue would be solved, now if they profit the
| issue will get larger and alrger.
| smaudet wrote:
| For this type of case it would be ideal if you could give
| him a passcode.
|
| Couldn't be too difficult to set up a "unknown number"
| redirect that prompts for a pin, then forwards to a live
| line if correct.
| swader999 wrote:
| I wonder if this could be setup as a rule to go directly to
| voice mail if not in contacts.
| runeb wrote:
| iPhones has a setting for this
| ipnon wrote:
| Yes, this is available in iOS settings.
| erikcw wrote:
| I've always wished that there was an option to whitelist
| certain area codes. I've had the same number for 20
| years, and now live in a different part of the country. I
| get very little spam from local area codes -- but a ton
| spoofing my phone number's area code. Sending all calls
| all those calls to voicemail while continuing to ring for
| local would be the right balance (kids' school, doctors
| office, etc...).
| samstave wrote:
| I do a thing where I answer and just dont say anything
| (ensuring my enviornment is silent) for like 20+ seconds....
| they hang up and I block number. (The bot thinks its a dead
| num and I dont get calls again.
| Aissen wrote:
| I do this too, but I also remember that I'm doing this from a
| situation of privilege, where I mostly don't have to wait for
| calls that could be life changing (ex: old-school HR calling
| back for a new job).
| yreg wrote:
| I do the same, but even the legitimate callers never seem to
| leave a voicemail or send a text message.
|
| I have missed deliveries or other important things due to my
| policy.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Many of us are in situations where we get calls from various
| people we haven't had contact before (nurse at the child's
| school, parent's doctor, there's a lot of them) that should
| be answered immediately; waiting until later to listen to the
| message could have significant impacts. Some of the calls
| (injured child) could require immediate contact and, if not
| answered, could result in other issues.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| Yeah, when you have small children, your obligation to pick
| up the phone when they aren't with you is increased. I also
| find that whenever you're shopping for big-ticket items
| that involve salespeople and soliciting multiple bids, you
| have to forego your "don't pick up the phone for unknown
| numbers" policy.
|
| I now just pick up and say "hello?" and count off two
| seconds. If I don't hear a response within that time I hang
| up. I've had a couple false positives, but they generally
| just assume there was a dropped call and try again.
| myself248 wrote:
| I pick up and don't say anything. Humans typically, after
| about 4 seconds, go "umm.. hello?" and I have a
| conversation with them, while bots simply hang up.
| petsfed wrote:
| My area code doesn't match my area, and most e.g.
| recruiters are calling from other area codes as well, so I
| can be reasonably confident that a local-area-code call is
| legitimate, but man is it frustrating to brace myself for
| "$child/$spouse/$etc is on their way to $hospital..." and
| instead I get "I was very impressed by your skills I got
| from $someJobBoardIHaven'tUsedInYears, are you free to talk
| about a $industryOrCareerFieldIDon'tWorkIn position located
| in $areaIHaven'tLivedInInYears?"* _Especially_ if they 've
| called repeatedly in a short amount of time without leaving
| a message.
|
| *bonus if they're speaking heavily accented english and
| miss important connecting words, suggesting they don't even
| really understand the script they're reading from, much
| less the job description they just pulled off of Indeed or
| wherever.
| TylerE wrote:
| Area codes are increasingly meaningless as people A: drop
| land lines and B: Keep porting the same cell number
| around (for obvious reasons).
|
| Really what's needed it ditching numbers, at least as
| user facing things, and having something like phone-over-
| dns.
| dheera wrote:
| One way might be to list a number that you monitor as their
| "emergency contact" but list a virtual or other no-pick-up-
| policy number for all other forms.
|
| The only issue is that a friend once listed me as their
| emergency contact for a gym membership, but then the gym
| made telemarketing calls to me with it. There should be
| federal law protecting emergency contact numbers from being
| shared or used for any reason except an emergency.
|
| Alternative method might be to set up a Twilio workflow
| that says "Press 1 to reach me" and only forward to your
| actual phone after that. That will probably eliminate all
| the robocallers but not the human telemarketers
| conradev wrote:
| Newer versions of Android and iOS allow you to immediately
| send a call to voicemail and then watch the live
| transcription
|
| If it's important, the caller will generally start leaving
| a message, and you can pick up right there
| petsfed wrote:
| I've had a disturbingly large number of repeat calls from
| people who absolutely refuse to leave a message. And it's
| always some recruiter who saw an opening on indeed or
| somewhere and thinks the resume I updated 5 years ago is a
| good match.
|
| The problem is that if I'm getting repeated calls from an
| unrecognized number, I'm assuming my wife, my kids, or my
| parents are in an ambulance, so I have to drop everything and
| answer.
|
| As a rule of thumb, if I get a one-off call that doesn't
| leave a message, I'll search my email inbox for that number,
| as they've probably contacted me separately. However, one
| time, I got called 5 times in 90 minutes, with the only
| message being 23 seconds of silence, and an email I hadn't
| even read yet (searching the number brought up the email). I
| sent an angry email that amounted to "you have told me how
| you AND YOUR CLIENTS treat prospective employees' time. I
| will never apply to any job you suggest, even independently
| of you. Stop calling"
| TylerE wrote:
| One major flaw in this, at least for me: Dr's offices. They
| love to dial from a gazillion random numbers, and for privacy
| reasons they often leave no message or a very vague and
| concerning "Call us when you get this" sort of thing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _and it hasn 't let me down yet._
|
| It's let me down a ton. Deliveries, contractors, maintenance
| people, doctor's offices with a last minute appointment
| available, and so forth. Fortunately never for a true
| emergency, but that's also something to keep in mind as well.
|
| There are lots of things that people simply don't leave a
| voice mail or text because if they can't contact you
| immediately, there's no point. Or if the contractor can't get
| you on the phone, they'll just move onto the next home and
| skip work on yours that day or that whole week.
|
| So it's not win/win. It's very much win/lose.
| genevra wrote:
| A good tactic I use is as stated + if you see a number you
| don't recognize is to answer and then put yourself on mute
| and wait. Typically robocalls just hang up after a few
| seconds of silence.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I struggle to do this cause it shows that the number is
| valid. Always leads to an increase in calls for me :(
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| my strategy is to live in a different place than my area
| code and only pick up from number that do not share my area
| code. This is pretty clise to working but I did almost miss
| an instacart delivery because they happened to be from my
| home town.
| officeplant wrote:
| I try to live this way, but people have become increasingly
| bad at actually leaving voicemails.
| whyenot wrote:
| It's great when it works, but when my mom was in the hospital
| and they needed to reach me, I got burned by this big time
| and don't do it anymore. It's too easy to miss a call that
| could literally be life and death (my mom is better now).
| standardUser wrote:
| You guys are answering the phone?
|
| Maybe if I just placed a delivery order I will answer for an
| unknown local number. Beyond that, leave a message at the beep
| and maybe I'll check it in a few days.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| When you're dealing with contractors and whatever for house
| stuff, yeah you kinda need to answer the phone for long
| stretches of time. Same if you have kids (I don't), you need
| to be receptive. Yes yes I am incredibly aware that people
| can leave voicemails and send text messages, but many out
| there won't do it, from real experience, especially those
| outside of the tech bubble.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I answer the phone and don't say anything.
|
| Humans will typically ask if anyone is there, robots will
| either start their pre-recorded bullshit or hang up.
| tombert wrote:
| I have gotten into the habit of answering the phone in the
| Graham-Bell/Mr. Burns way by answering "Ahoy Hoy" whenever I
| get a number that I don't recognize. I figure that that's not
| going to be as useful for any training purposes, and is also
| pretty inoffensive, so even if I don't get a robot then it
| won't offend anyone.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Yep, I don't say hello anymore either, if I don't recognize the
| number. Makes things awkward sometimes, but this is the dogshit
| awful world we live in.
| holoduke wrote:
| Wonder how many secs of voice you need to replicate one. You
| can call a number programmatically, ask something silly. record
| the response and then recreate the voice. I can imagine one can
| do much harm. Like calling the voice's boss and tell him you
| fell in love with his wife and now resign.
| LegitShady wrote:
| Receiving a call like that would terrify me. I'd become super
| paranoid.
|
| I've been screening all my calls with the pixel call screener
| feature. Worth it.
| b8 wrote:
| This is why I love Google's new AI phone call screening
| feature. Some people get spooked by it and hang up, and
| sometimes spam calls get through via exploits like calling
| twice within a short time or somehow bypassing with a weird
| spoofed number (only happened 1-2 times so far)
| chaoticmass wrote:
| If I don't know the number, I answer with "Hola. Buenos dias."
| Osiris wrote:
| If I immediately hear sound from the caller it's usually a
| valid call. If I wait several seconds and it's just quiet, it's
| an automatic dialer waiting for a voice response. I found it
| highly effective at weeding out spam calls.
| aw49r59aw wrote:
| This website is reminding me more and more of libertarian
| facebook groups that I saw in the past. Goodbye Hacker News.
| heififoekehdkf wrote:
| don't let the door hit you on the way out
| notfed wrote:
| Please elaborate, for someone like myself who can't keep up
| with the latest belief systems of political parties?
|
| Do libertarians have a strong view on this topic, and what is
| it?
|
| Regarding the comments, I see very few inflammatory or divisive
| comments. The average comment here seems to be poking fun at
| the fact that robocalls are already illegal, and that banning
| the more specific "AI robocall" seems like security theater.
| asow92 wrote:
| Would you support phones having an optional answering captcha
| system for untrusted numbers? Something like:
|
| "answer the following question to complete your call: if Sally
| has two eggs and Michael has one, how many do they both have?"
| falcor84 wrote:
| Isn't that the sort of task that's easier for an AI than a
| human with other stuff on their minds?
| asow92 wrote:
| I agree that it wouldn't catch all spam, but it might help
| reduce the amount of recorded robocalls waiting for someone
| naive enough to engage.
| zekyl314 wrote:
| My Dad's landline makes you press a digit before completing the
| call. So that exists already, and wish more would add this as a
| feature. I'm sure like anything, it could be defeated, if they
| had a system listening for the key to press. But it works for
| now.
| asow92 wrote:
| Oh definitely, and and it will always be a game of cat and
| mouse.
|
| That feature on your Dad's phone sounds like a decent step in
| the right direction.
| adamomada wrote:
| To check the balance on a prepaid credit card I found on the
| ground (the modern equivalent of finding a $20 bill lol) I had
| to go through a prompt that said "press the number of the first
| digit of the following: eight, four, two"
|
| So it works in some way for the CC companies at least.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I use google's call screening and it works wonders.
| https://youtu.be/V2IyttWHJfs?si=AW6fZQMl85w4srBM&t=48
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| It's puzzling why wasn't this wasn't already illegal by virtue of
| robocalls themselves being illegal. Why are those allowed?
| MarioMan wrote:
| This is exactly what the ruling is doing. It is explicit
| confirmation that it was already illegal under existing law.
| happytiger wrote:
| What kind of lack of common sense makes the use of a robotic
| voice illegal but allows the robotic calls to continue unabated?
| This is nuts.
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| The ruling is to treat calls with AI-generated voices the same
| as other robocalls, which are already illegal.
| happytiger wrote:
| Ok so what's the point of another new ruling to make them
| especially illegal if they were already illegal? I am slow
| today. :)
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| There is a law about "artificial or prerecorded voice
| messages", the law was written in 1991 before modern voice
| generation programs so it might be unclear if it applies to
| them, the commission now declared that it does. This is
| often how it works in the U.S., congress passes a somewhat
| vague and general law, which authorizes an agency (in this
| case the FCC) to develop more detailed regulations.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I suspect this will be challenged and the Supreme Court will
| overturn it on First Amendment grounds.
|
| Why? Because creating hate and fear through variouis forms of
| media is a key part of politics. For example, local media
| (newspapers, radio and TV) are very big on ppushing crime
| hysteria narratives, despite crime being near all time lows.
|
| There's too much vested interest in unlimited robocalls to let
| this ruling stand.
|
| The one exception to all this is if you use an AI-generated voice
| to impersonate someone to say something they never said but this
| is already illegal on the grounds of defamation. The same applies
| to any deepfakes.
|
| The real problem is that the phone network as it exists now needs
| to die. Add to that the decades-long effort to pack the court and
| overturn campaign finance laws (ie Citizens United v. FEC).
|
| So I suspect this move will go nowhere. This will probably be
| even easier to challenge when SCOTUS overturns Chevron, as most
| expect them to do, essentially gutting executive agency power.
| httpz wrote:
| I haven't answered a single phone call from a number I don't
| recognize for years now. As far as I know, I haven't missed
| anything important.
| quatrefoil wrote:
| But we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended
| warranty...
| ct0 wrote:
| sir, ive been trying to reach you about your ...
| mchannon wrote:
| Being forced to interact with city government, state benefits,
| hospital systems, courts, police, and especially probation
| officers, all of whom are known to block or obfuscate their
| number even though missing their call could cause you no end of
| trouble, would help disabuse you of your smug solipsism.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| And most services including utilities if you want to reach a
| human. It fucking sucks because English is my second
| language, I can read and type fine but if I have to talk on
| the phone I'm screwed, maybe both of us could understand 70%
| what the other party says
| SirMaster wrote:
| Do they not leave a message?
| mchannon wrote:
| No, they don't.
|
| When the doctor's office can't get a hold of you, now
| you're looking at 6 months longer until you get to see the
| specialist you've been waiting for.
|
| When probation can't get a hold of you, now you're looking
| at an unannounced visit, violation, and/or arrest warrant.
| This happened DAILY when ankle monitors suddenly
| malfunctioned and communicated that they'd been cut off or
| that I was violating home confinement by leaving
| unannounced.
| SirMaster wrote:
| I've never experienced a doctor or dentist office not
| leaving me a message.
|
| But that's just my experience I guess.
| al_borland wrote:
| I've submitted several ideas to Apple over the years. One of
| them actually made its way into iOS, which is the silence
| unknown callers option. I'm very happy about that. Before they
| added it, I tried to implement it with the existing feature set
| by setting my default ring to silent, then adding a custom ring
| to all my contacts. It was a pain, but it technically worked.
|
| One thing I really noticed was the dramatic drop in call volume
| once I stopped answering calls. Once I stopped answering, they
| stopped trying to call. People are basically being trained not
| to answer the phone.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| That's one of the reasons I've not been huge on the recent
| (within the last several years) increase in "scam baiters"
| and stuff. As much as it does waste the time of the scammer
| and as helpful as some of the big ones are, normal people who
| do it are having little effect and ultimately just putting
| themselves on more and more lists.
| notfed wrote:
| Scam baiters spread awareness and education of modern
| scams. That's a huge plus.
|
| Agreed, though, "don't try this at home" should be
| emphasized more.
| heififoekehdkf wrote:
| That will do nothing to stop the Indian scammers
| justinzollars wrote:
| The most popular topics on HN are bureaucratic decrees. Sad.
| notfed wrote:
| Says the guy who submitted an HN post about an executive order,
| 29 days ago. (Which I see nothing wrong with, just pointing out
| the hypocrisy.)
|
| Anyway, _is_ it sad, really, for folks on _hacker news_ to
| discuss regulations on information technology? Especially when
| the regulation pivots on, of all things, "AI"?
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Makes sense, impersonating people for gain and/or harm is
| illegal.
| calamari4065 wrote:
| How exactly do they propose to enforce this that isn't the same
| way they "enforce" already illegal robocalls?
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Probably not very enforceable. There is already a case in Hong
| Kong where an employee transferred 25m to scammers because of a
| deepfake video call of scammers pretending to be his colleagues.
| adolph wrote:
| I thought robocalls were already "illegal." Does this make them
| double bad? Is the FCC going to do twice as much nothing about
| the issue?
| lamroger wrote:
| It takes three seconds of speech to generate a synthetic version.
| I think of my journey job searching and how much personal
| information I have to trust with basically random people. Voice,
| likeness, sample writing, resume. Everything is out there already
| but makes it a lot easier
| declan_roberts wrote:
| I'm sure this will will be about as effective as the FCC's do not
| call registry!
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Incoming pittance fine and a handie.
|
| I'm braced..
| modeless wrote:
| Does this outlaw the Google thing that makes restaurant
| reservations for you?
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| Depends whether the restaurant asks "Which name do I put on the
| reservation" or "What's your name"
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I think the FCC is splitting unimportant hairs. All non-opt-in
| robo calls should be considered a criminal attack on the
| communications infrastructure.
|
| But of course, this is considered an important part of political
| campaigning, and probably no one appointed to chair the agency
| will let it happen.
| cush wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. For most people robocalls are an
| annoyance, but for millions of aging seniors they are a direct
| form of elder abuse. The amount of confusion, fear, and actual
| financial ruin I've had to deal with with family members makes
| me wonder how it's had been legal for so long
| jsbg wrote:
| I don't think that will stop scammers!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Just like spam calls are illegal! Very confident people globally
| will follow our laws :)
| sys32768 wrote:
| If you get the persistent scammer calls, you can transfer them to
| https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
| nextworddev wrote:
| Just ban robocalls
| euroderf wrote:
| Then you turn plain old voice calls into an oasis for humans.
| Not a bad idea.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Does this mean all the AI voice assistant via phone startups are
| screwed ? Or it's only for outgoing calls ?
| devmor wrote:
| I'm sure this will stop the 3-6 automated spam calls I get daily
| that originate outside the country.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Why cant they make all robocalls illegal? Name me one good
| robocall
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The pharmacy calling to tell me that my prescription is ready.
| Those may be AI-generated too if they add the medication name
| in. Not sure if that's covered by this ruling though.
| ortusdux wrote:
| > Why cant they make all robocalls illegal?
|
| Generally, speaking, the FCC can't pass laws, only interpret
| and apply them. In this instance they are not making a new law,
| they are declaring that the powers granted to them under the
| TCPA (a law passed by Congress in 1991) allows them to
| regulate/ban AI voiced calls.
|
| > Name me one good robocall.
|
| Government services. Voter info, school closures, water
| outages, etc.
| zer8k wrote:
| Did they send a formal cease and desist to entire countries worth
| of scammers? Otherwise, this is yet another piece of feel-good
| legislation that will do nothing to stop my phone from going off.
|
| Yes, I use RoboKiller. No, it doesn't stop everything. The text
| spam in particular has gotten crazy and it's not even close to
| election day.
| jmward01 wrote:
| People use phones to 'call' each other? When did they get this
| feature? Is it some variation of FaceTime?
| fragmede wrote:
| I'm sorry, you must be trolling. It inconceivable, that in
| 2024, an audio to audio connection connection could be made
| between two "phone" users. What's next, phone numbers?
| yreg wrote:
| Does this have any impact on Google Duplex-like services? That
| was the thing that enabled Pixel users to ask Google Assistant to
| call a restaurant and make a reservation on their behalf, etc.
| fragmede wrote:
| unsolicited. If the business has a contract with Google, Google
| can update the contact to say that they're allowed to.
| yreg wrote:
| That doesn't seem like a good idea. If Google/Microsoft
| really want to, they could get a big chunk of small
| businesses to allow them to do this. However there would be
| no way to build a competing service.
|
| I feel like robocalls made on behalf of actual consumers in
| relation to actual b2c transactions should be allowed.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| just rule robo calls illegal.
|
| this is a baseless distinction.
|
| if there's not a human on the other side, it's illegal. easy to
| prove, record a call, ask some dumb questions and all is simple.
|
| this is a pointless line.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I think it is important to note that the legal principle that
| allows the FCC to make rulings like this is called Chevron
| Deference, and many consider it to be under attack.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/01/supreme-court-likely-to-d...
| anonymouse008 wrote:
| Congress should have gotten off their hands and written
| something by now, same with Crypto legislation. "Chevron
| Deference" breeds tyranny through legislative apathy
| skybrian wrote:
| From a practical point of view, it's hard to say whether
| Congress would make better or worse decisions, and it's
| probably good that the government can make decisions about
| new technologies while Congress is mostly dysfunctional.
|
| Maybe the thing that guards against tyranny is that Congress
| can override them (by passing a law) if regulators screw up
| badly enough?
|
| At least, in theory.
|
| Just like, in theory, the people could elect a better
| Congress.
| mullingitover wrote:
| It's by design. Legislators aren't and can't be competent
| regulators, and they know this.
|
| Congress can't even handle managing fiscal policy sanely, and
| that's the one job they can't delegate.
| alphazard wrote:
| That's nice. How do they prove that the voice was AI generated,
| and how do they go about punishing the caller?
|
| It seems like we have been trying to legislate away spam callers
| for a while now, but enforcement is pretty lacking.
| donatj wrote:
| Seems like there's a potentially silly but also valid argument
| here that that's a literal violation of free speech?
| Dalrymple wrote:
| "Artificial" voices in telephone calls have existed since 1971.
| That is when the Votrax speech synthesis device was first
| developed by a company known at the time as the Federal Screw
| Works. The engineering was done by Richard Gagnon.
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