Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

fcc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 184 posts

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#101

Post by joshAg »

duxup wrote: post #91
joshAg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same thing. In order to create any free market and foster competition, an entity has to decide and then enforce the rules for the market, which allows that entity to pick a winner by the rules it choose to write and then enforce. Plus, in mature markets, fostering competition is antithetical to maintaining the "freeness" of the market, because it requires punishing the "winners" in order to ensure competitor…

I don't buy into the implication that any decision is picking winners the outcomes don't have to be that absolute.

Every decision about what to enforce and when has a set of competitors that benefit from that decision and a set of competitors that are disadvantaged from that decision.

And over time even a single, small benefit can be enough to guarantee a specific rational actor will win out over its competitors.

Certainly not in all cases, but if the issue you have is that individual decisions aren't enough to pick a winner, no matter how large/important, then change the last paragraph to

>>> And of course, every decision made for how to implement the kinds of issues outlined in the above paragraph is an opportunity to pick whom to give an advantage over their competitors, too.

And this doesn't even begin to consider the issue that since the mechanism for making and enforcing the rules exists within the system of rules it creates, both fostering competition and enforcing a free market give opportunities for competitors to buy rules and/or enforcement of rules that benefit them at the expense of competitors, either directly or indirectly.

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#102

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

paulie_a wrote: post #74
j-c-hewitt wrote: post #46

Robocalls are a constant annoyance for me (I get maybe 1 per day on average) and almost all of them are criminally fraudulent solicitations of some kind including calls impersonating the Social Security Administration etc. It's like being forced to read my spam folder with an audible alert. I have to field calls from a lot of clients that I have never spoken to before or have only called them a couple times, so only…

I get about ten a day and you are dead on. They are all criminally fraudulent. This shouldn't be handled by the FCC but the fbi. Every single person at the robocalling company should be arrested, even the secretary. This isn't a civil matter, this is criminal and should be treated as such.

I agree 100%.

It's clear to me that the U.S. has the technical capability of hunting down the origins of these calls, and bring the offenders to trial.

This leads me to believe it's a matter of political will, and I don't understand the inaction.

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#103

Post by bogomipz »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #81
wpietri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's not clear to me that most "pro-market" advocates even understand markets. They work best when purchasers have many options, clear information, easy switching, and equal power to sellers. But at least in the US, most of the "pro-market" voices in practice seem to be in favor of oligopoly and the absolute right of businesses to exploit information, wealth, and power asymmetries. It makes me a bit bonkers…

In the US, I think one problem is have too much mixing of public and private. We give the public sector a lot of decision making power relatively free of consequences, and leave massive profit opportunities for anyone in the private sector who manages to buy enough influence. Healthcare was far from a free market already before ObamaCare. But if we're going to regulate it as heavily as we do, I think we need to just…

>"We give the public sector a lot of decision making power relatively free of consequences, and leave massive profit opportunities for anyone in the private sector who manages to buy enough influence."

What would be an example of giving the public sector much decision making power "relatively free from consequence?" Would this be the FCC in this context? I ask because I'm genuinely interested in the point your making. Is there a relationship between this and and opportunistic private sector? Would this be the cell carriers in this context?

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#104

Post by gaius_baltar »

bluGill wrote: post #88
r00fus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If bypasses were common (mostly just sending "1"), then a configurable number you could cycle would work fine. Everyone would have a different number and you only get 3 tries. Anything more complicated like actually following the voice prompt isn't going to happen soon.

voice recognition is already to the point where it can recognize numbers. That we are limited to one of 12 numbers (including * and #) before it gets too hard for humans limits the problem scope to the point where it is a relatively easy problem. Of course this assumes enough people follow the pattern of press some number to continue. Every time the pattern changes the cost of understanding it and fitting it into the…

It can be done by asking some obvious question for humans:

"This is a anti-robocall system, please answer the question to complete the call. A mother cat and her three kittens are sleeping in a box. Dial the number of animals in that box."

The number of kittens change randomly and maybe the system can put some pillows, blankets and other non-animals in the box too, making automated processing harder. AI will get there, sure, but this will make things expensive for the attackers.

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#105

Post by cannonedhamster »

bduerst wrote: post #78
duxup wrote: post #37

According to Ars they want to leave it up to the carriers if they want to charge for it, if that is accurate and the robocall problems escalate then you could end up paying for it by default ... or just get robocalls all day. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/ajit-pais-roboca... "It will cost $X a month for service, and $Y more if you want to be able to use it..." And as a revenue stream I worry this could…

Spam communication blocking isn't a revenue stream in other markets (e.g. email, snail mail, etc.), and while cell service may seem like an oligopoly, there is enough competition that customers will scoff at switching to a provider that nickel and dimes on spam blocking.

Really? What competition is there in the U.S. cellular market? MVNOs are beholden to whomever they buy from. T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon. That's 4 carriers total.

Definition of oligopoly: Oligopoly is a market structure with a small number of firms, none of which can keep the others from having significant influence.

I can literally buy a SIM card in Europe for my phone that gives me 5 times my monthly usage for less than what I pay for a single month.The market is absolutely harmed by the lack of competition and we did it to ourselves by selling off the public spectrum and paying for the privilege to do so. The Republican party is the most anti-American party that exists in the US and they used the willingness of the religious right to follow whatever lip service they get paid to the ballot box.

Democrats are pretty terrible too, but mostly because they are naive, unwilling to get their hands dirty, and try to play by rules that are only used by them. You don't win a war with flowery words and kind gestures. You win it by eliminating your enemy and taking away any ability by them to continue the fight.

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#106

Post by vonmoltke »

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #102
paulie_a wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get about ten a day and you are dead on. They are all criminally fraudulent. This shouldn't be handled by the FCC but the fbi. Every single person at the robocalling company should be arrested, even the secretary. This isn't a civil matter, this is criminal and should be treated as such.

I agree 100%. It's clear to me that the U.S. has the technical capability of hunting down the origins of these calls, and bring the offenders to trial. This leads me to believe it's a matter of political will, and I don't understand the inaction.

> It's clear to me that the U.S. has the technical capability of hunting down the origins of these calls, and bring the offenders to trial.

How is that clear?

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#107

Post by nartz »

1. Why can we not ban spoofed numbers?

2. It would be great if instead they introduced legislation that made it dead simple to sue robocallers, i.e. - request your call records from carrier - submit said call records through online portal proving excessive calls

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#109

Post by Taniwha »

js2 wrote: post #17
hangonhn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's this voice captcha you use?

Anveo Call Flow. Numbers not on a whitelist get a recording "press 1 to be connected" which repeats three times a couple seconds apart. If they don't press 1 they get sent to voice mail. I also have a blacklist that gets a captcha which says "press 1 to leave a voice mail" and hangs up if they don't.

I have run asterisk for 15 years now, everyone in the house has a 1 digit extension number (that way we can have private voicemail) I haven't had a robocall in years

Re: FCC Chairman Proposes Robocall Blocking by Default

#110

Post by Wheaties466 »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #81
wpietri wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it's not clear to me that most "pro-market" advocates even understand markets. They work best when purchasers have many options, clear information, easy switching, and equal power to sellers. But at least in the US, most of the "pro-market" voices in practice seem to be in favor of oligopoly and the absolute right of businesses to exploit information, wealth, and power asymmetries. It makes me a bit bonkers…

In the US, I think one problem is have too much mixing of public and private. We give the public sector a lot of decision making power relatively free of consequences, and leave massive profit opportunities for anyone in the private sector who manages to buy enough influence. Healthcare was far from a free market already before ObamaCare. But if we're going to regulate it as heavily as we do, I think we need to just…

Unfortunately completely socializing the healthcare system would tank the economy thats why no serious person in washington is pro universal healthcare.
Post reply on HN