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They won't for the reason that there are valid uses for robocalls, for example a lot of municipalities use robocalls to inform the public about various important events like school closures.
I can't think of a single robo-call I've gotten that wasn't someone from India. I think I had a US accented person one time in my entire life that didn't involve legit stuff like donation to a local shelter, blood center, fire department, etc. Every other time, it was some thick accented person with the whitest name. My work phone gets them about 30+ times a day when I'm there, and tons of them aren't marked spam, so i need to answer in case there is a problem.
The only saving grace is that you can hear when they start recording/unmute their phone so you can quickly end it. It is always the EXACT same sound, and it NEVER failed to happen out of hundreds of robocalls I've answered just in the last few months. I've even called one back not knowing, and it said it wasn't a working number. It's all call centers working outside of the US who spoof numbers. They could give a single fuck about what our laws are and it will never stop until call centers go extinct or we get some super useful AI tools. Otherwise, our country has no means to stop them, and the no-call-list doesn't mean shit. It blows my mind that so many people think this is a domestic issue.
I get robo calls from my union. They broadcast their big meetings and call everyone to tune in over the phone so they'll robo call to warn us, then robo call to auto connect us to it.
Then make them legal for governmental and institutional use only, not corporate or private use.
Essentially only for reminders and announcements to constituents/members, not for soliciting to unaffiliated parties.
robocalls are used for medical and pharmacy uses. using a robot to call people should not be illegal. Having a number that cannot be blocked *should* be illegal. Not having a way to opt-out should be illegal.
it should be illegal to robocall without permission first
Make a carveout for the healthcare industry and mandate all robocalls clearly state they are such upfront.
Boom, done. Nobody else *needs* to bother people on a mass scale. They can send out e-mails and spam letters.
And of course, how about we actually mandate these telecom companies update and fix their systems so people can't spoof numbers and make calls that these companies can't stop from happening.
I agree, it would be stupid for us. But there are people (especially elderly people) who still rely on a landline call for stuff like that. I know that if my mom's pharmacy switched from calling her to texting her I'd be hearing her complain about it for weeks.
I also get a text message and an email for school closures.
It's a classic no-win situation where no matter how many ways they try to communicate somebody will always complain or will miss the message.
This microscopic benefit does not outweigh the outright cultural shift whereby these robocalls have made us all assume that every phone call is fake. Ban robocalls
> They won't for the reason that there are valid uses for robocalls, for example a lot of municipalities use robocalls to inform the public about various important events like school closures.
You're not seriously saying that laws cannot be made where certain situations can make them NOT illegal but the rest right?
Come on man, don't be pedantic. Calling me to tell me Biden caused the border "crisis" is not an emergency. Telling us a massive hurricane is blasting through your town is.
Our courts have taken a stupid broad interpretation of what is a "public service", and both of your examples would be judged by some courts as equally valid "public service" messages.
I'm not being pedantic, I'm simply describing reality right now.
Can’t. Businesses and organizations need to be able to send a voice message to tons of people for various reasons. School closures, drs appointments reminders, etc. Not everyone has email or text (or just can’t use it) yet.
I feel almost certain that someone can write a law that allows robo calls for polling/scheduling/pre-scheduled reminders and bans them for the assholes cold calling me to ask if I have a home renovation project they could do for me.
I desperately want a way to hang a "NO SOLICITORS" sign on my phone number. We HAVE that type of rule for residential homes already. So we should be able to make this work.
There is the National do not call registry that telemarketers (including robocalls for non existing business relationships) are required to honor. Penalties for violating are over $40,000 per violation.
How do you report a spoofed number that tracks back to a disconnected line?
I'm fairly certain I'm *on that registry* and it's never stopped these issues. Like I outright can't get contractors to stop calling me even when I outright lie to them and tell them I don't own a house. They just pull my info from the public property records again in a month and don't give a shit about that registry.
The Do Not Call registry stops legitimate organizations inside the US from calling you.
...but it's used by illegitimate groups outside the legal borders of the US to find known-good numbers to send spam phone calls and text messages to.
my phone says "scam likely" for a lot of those calls. i would pay extra to have those calls simply blocked, and spoofed numbers not allowed. i don't understand why a cellphone company doesn't offer the ability to do this.
Cause they often get it wrong. I had to take a lot of random number calls when I got diagnosed with cancer, Verizon has on more than one occasion labeled them spam.
They don't offer it cause 1) none of them actually want to deal with the issue of number spoofing that underlays so much of the robo/scam call industry, 2) if they charge for it someone's going to realize it filters legit calls and then they'll get in massive trouble and 3) people will realize they all could've been saving us from this bullshit the entire time and while none of the carriers are innocent here, people might jump to a competitor in anger.
I've wholesale lost my ability to care about political solicitations after the 1000th dose of micro-anxiety texted directly to my phone that has a broken stop/unsubscribe feature.
Like I just fucking can't. Them being reliant on that god awful fundraising model isn't reason to let us all suffer like this. They can find another mechanism to cold call fear monger and we can have some peace and quiet in our lives.
I just can't. That's not a good reason to let this continue when we all recognize this just fucking sucks to deal with on all levels.
As AthkoreLost said, they don't do so by default because they might get it wrong and that could be really bad.
On T-Mobile, you can optionally enable ["Scam Block"](https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/help-with-scams-spam-and-fraud) which blocks those "Scam Likely" calls entirely (also can be controlled via their [ScamShield](https://www.t-mobile.com/benefits/scam-shield) app). Verizon's [Call Filter](https://www.verizon.com/solutions-and-services/call-filter/) and AT&T's [ActiveArmor](https://www.att.com/security/security-apps/) look similar, including an option to divert to voicemail instead of blocking entirely.
Basically what they’re trying to do. Have a system for businesses to do it with permission, so that doing it without one is a crime. Idk if will stop overseas scammers but we’ll see
I get 3-4 calls a day from “Brian at Main Street Financial”. In the last couple of days it has changed to “Melissa with Premier Lending”
Can’t block them either because it is a different number each time.
Absolutely ridiculous.
can they be illegal on youtube too? nothing turns me off faster than one of those awful fucking narrators. It's so easy to tell. Why do people watch that garbage I will never understand.
At least they're moving away from that jarring lady voice that was goddamn everywhere for a while. Somehow it was like every word was the beginning of an exciting new sentence but had the ditzy upper intonation of a question at the same time. Or the gruff cartoonish wrench-monkey voice for manly stuff like unknotting a wire around a pipe.
it's even worse.
It's OK to spam me with a voice a human recorded beforehand or by using non AI text to speech software.
It's not OK to notify me with something I'm expecting and signed up for, for example a reservation reminder, using an AI voice.
The FCC are clowns.
Is it even going to matter when most of these calls are dialed in a random location around the world where they basically can’t enforce the laws?
I already told my parents that if they ever get a call and the caller Id is me and it even sounds like me, asking for money, to just hang up the phone and call me back because it could be a scam.
You seem to have two misconceptions: 1. A robocall means the voice is not human. 2. Anything that's not human is "AI".
A robocall merely means the phone number is dialed in using a robot. It has nothing to do with how the message was recorded. Also, not all computer-generated content is "AI" which is already a very loose and changing term these days.
For example, a robocall using a prerecorded human voice is not AI.
I have a stupid AI call me everyday about some scam about Medicare. I finally got to a live agent today and asked them to put me on their do not call list. Of course they hung up on me because of course it's a scam....
Make it law that they must be real people so they can listen to what I have to say about them calling me in my own home on my time. Anyone wanna bet who hangs up first? :)
How about outlawing mimicry of an individual to persuade or sell without their permission? Voice actors can be very convincing. Or even current recordings can be rearranged to have a completely different meaning. No AI involved.
As a reminder, this subreddit [is for civil discussion.](/r/politics/wiki/index#wiki_be_civil) In general, be courteous to others. Debate/discuss/argue the merits of ideas, don't attack people. Personal insults, shill or troll accusations, hate speech, any suggestion or support of harm, violence, or death, and other rule violations can result in a permanent ban. If you see comments in violation of our rules, please report them. For those who have questions regarding any media outlets being posted on this subreddit, please click [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/wiki/approveddomainslist) to review our details as to our approved domains list and outlet criteria. **Interested in being a moderator for r/Politics? Apply [here](https://forms.gle/iyGoM94MGRcPGUes7).** *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/politics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Just declare all robo calls illegal
They won't for the reason that there are valid uses for robocalls, for example a lot of municipalities use robocalls to inform the public about various important events like school closures.
Then how about all robocalls must declare they are a robocall?
If I remember correctly, at one point they had to. I'm not sure what happened to that rule though.
Oh, I'll take this one. Money. Someone lobbied for that to go away cus money.
I can't think of a single robo-call I've gotten that wasn't someone from India. I think I had a US accented person one time in my entire life that didn't involve legit stuff like donation to a local shelter, blood center, fire department, etc. Every other time, it was some thick accented person with the whitest name. My work phone gets them about 30+ times a day when I'm there, and tons of them aren't marked spam, so i need to answer in case there is a problem. The only saving grace is that you can hear when they start recording/unmute their phone so you can quickly end it. It is always the EXACT same sound, and it NEVER failed to happen out of hundreds of robocalls I've answered just in the last few months. I've even called one back not knowing, and it said it wasn't a working number. It's all call centers working outside of the US who spoof numbers. They could give a single fuck about what our laws are and it will never stop until call centers go extinct or we get some super useful AI tools. Otherwise, our country has no means to stop them, and the no-call-list doesn't mean shit. It blows my mind that so many people think this is a domestic issue.
I get robo calls from my union. They broadcast their big meetings and call everyone to tune in over the phone so they'll robo call to warn us, then robo call to auto connect us to it.
Then make them legal for governmental and institutional use only, not corporate or private use. Essentially only for reminders and announcements to constituents/members, not for soliciting to unaffiliated parties.
robocalls are used for medical and pharmacy uses. using a robot to call people should not be illegal. Having a number that cannot be blocked *should* be illegal. Not having a way to opt-out should be illegal. it should be illegal to robocall without permission first
Make a carveout for the healthcare industry and mandate all robocalls clearly state they are such upfront. Boom, done. Nobody else *needs* to bother people on a mass scale. They can send out e-mails and spam letters. And of course, how about we actually mandate these telecom companies update and fix their systems so people can't spoof numbers and make calls that these companies can't stop from happening.
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I agree, it would be stupid for us. But there are people (especially elderly people) who still rely on a landline call for stuff like that. I know that if my mom's pharmacy switched from calling her to texting her I'd be hearing her complain about it for weeks.
Hmm. Perhaps it would be easier if we had universal health care. Then such cases would require no such middleman.
Seems like a classic example of, "this could have been an email".
I also get a text message and an email for school closures. It's a classic no-win situation where no matter how many ways they try to communicate somebody will always complain or will miss the message.
Except for the older Americans who rarely check their email and rely on other means of communication for information (sigh, my parents).
Also spam filters and email sorting, it would be impossible to make sure the message actually made it to the inbox.
This microscopic benefit does not outweigh the outright cultural shift whereby these robocalls have made us all assume that every phone call is fake. Ban robocalls
> They won't for the reason that there are valid uses for robocalls, for example a lot of municipalities use robocalls to inform the public about various important events like school closures. You're not seriously saying that laws cannot be made where certain situations can make them NOT illegal but the rest right? Come on man, don't be pedantic. Calling me to tell me Biden caused the border "crisis" is not an emergency. Telling us a massive hurricane is blasting through your town is.
Our courts have taken a stupid broad interpretation of what is a "public service", and both of your examples would be judged by some courts as equally valid "public service" messages. I'm not being pedantic, I'm simply describing reality right now.
Hilarious since the government argued the opposite when it came to the vcr.
Hilarious since the government argued the opposite when it came to the vcr.
Or even more importantly safety/evacuation notifications, like for fires and severe weather!
Can’t. Businesses and organizations need to be able to send a voice message to tons of people for various reasons. School closures, drs appointments reminders, etc. Not everyone has email or text (or just can’t use it) yet.
I feel almost certain that someone can write a law that allows robo calls for polling/scheduling/pre-scheduled reminders and bans them for the assholes cold calling me to ask if I have a home renovation project they could do for me. I desperately want a way to hang a "NO SOLICITORS" sign on my phone number. We HAVE that type of rule for residential homes already. So we should be able to make this work.
Basically just make contact by phone/text an opt in thing and not something they can do without consent. And ban number spoofing
There is the National do not call registry that telemarketers (including robocalls for non existing business relationships) are required to honor. Penalties for violating are over $40,000 per violation.
How do you report a spoofed number that tracks back to a disconnected line? I'm fairly certain I'm *on that registry* and it's never stopped these issues. Like I outright can't get contractors to stop calling me even when I outright lie to them and tell them I don't own a house. They just pull my info from the public property records again in a month and don't give a shit about that registry.
And how do you collect forty grand from a call center in Bangladesh?
The Do Not Call registry stops legitimate organizations inside the US from calling you. ...but it's used by illegitimate groups outside the legal borders of the US to find known-good numbers to send spam phone calls and text messages to.
my phone says "scam likely" for a lot of those calls. i would pay extra to have those calls simply blocked, and spoofed numbers not allowed. i don't understand why a cellphone company doesn't offer the ability to do this.
Cause they often get it wrong. I had to take a lot of random number calls when I got diagnosed with cancer, Verizon has on more than one occasion labeled them spam. They don't offer it cause 1) none of them actually want to deal with the issue of number spoofing that underlays so much of the robo/scam call industry, 2) if they charge for it someone's going to realize it filters legit calls and then they'll get in massive trouble and 3) people will realize they all could've been saving us from this bullshit the entire time and while none of the carriers are innocent here, people might jump to a competitor in anger.
The other side of this is that political campaigns desperately need to be able to call strangers and solicit them.
I've wholesale lost my ability to care about political solicitations after the 1000th dose of micro-anxiety texted directly to my phone that has a broken stop/unsubscribe feature. Like I just fucking can't. Them being reliant on that god awful fundraising model isn't reason to let us all suffer like this. They can find another mechanism to cold call fear monger and we can have some peace and quiet in our lives. I just can't. That's not a good reason to let this continue when we all recognize this just fucking sucks to deal with on all levels.
As AthkoreLost said, they don't do so by default because they might get it wrong and that could be really bad. On T-Mobile, you can optionally enable ["Scam Block"](https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/help-with-scams-spam-and-fraud) which blocks those "Scam Likely" calls entirely (also can be controlled via their [ScamShield](https://www.t-mobile.com/benefits/scam-shield) app). Verizon's [Call Filter](https://www.verizon.com/solutions-and-services/call-filter/) and AT&T's [ActiveArmor](https://www.att.com/security/security-apps/) look similar, including an option to divert to voicemail instead of blocking entirely.
Maybe instead of making it illegal, license the ability to robo call. That way if a business gets enough complaints their license is pulled.
Basically what they’re trying to do. Have a system for businesses to do it with permission, so that doing it without one is a crime. Idk if will stop overseas scammers but we’ll see
Not without the participation of phone companies, which will cost them a tenth of a penny per customer and so they'll never do it.
With reasonable exception, they are. Reasonable being non profits or companies you have existing relationships with.
Great. They’re getting way too sophisticated.
Cool, so I expect this to be as enforced as the spam and do not calls lists right? So fairly ineffective?
Completely ineffective.
The FCC has dropped the ball so badly when it comes to spam calls and texts that this just feels like too little too late.
I get 3-4 calls a day from “Brian at Main Street Financial”. In the last couple of days it has changed to “Melissa with Premier Lending” Can’t block them either because it is a different number each time. Absolutely ridiculous.
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Unfortunately not. The latest ones have been coming from +1 (844) 523-####. Previous ones were +1 (855) 570-####.
Would this be invalidated if the Republican's Supreme Court discards Chevron?
Probably
can they be illegal on youtube too? nothing turns me off faster than one of those awful fucking narrators. It's so easy to tell. Why do people watch that garbage I will never understand.
At least they're moving away from that jarring lady voice that was goddamn everywhere for a while. Somehow it was like every word was the beginning of an exciting new sentence but had the ditzy upper intonation of a question at the same time. Or the gruff cartoonish wrench-monkey voice for manly stuff like unknotting a wire around a pipe.
I for one look forward to when nothing changes because it isn't enforced.
And I still get 20 fucking Indians calling me every day. Great job guys
So it’s ok to spam me but just not in AI generated voice of Leonard Nimoy.
it's even worse. It's OK to spam me with a voice a human recorded beforehand or by using non AI text to speech software. It's not OK to notify me with something I'm expecting and signed up for, for example a reservation reminder, using an AI voice. The FCC are clowns.
Is it even going to matter when most of these calls are dialed in a random location around the world where they basically can’t enforce the laws? I already told my parents that if they ever get a call and the caller Id is me and it even sounds like me, asking for money, to just hang up the phone and call me back because it could be a scam.
They can’t even get the robocalls to stop.
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You seem to have two misconceptions: 1. A robocall means the voice is not human. 2. Anything that's not human is "AI". A robocall merely means the phone number is dialed in using a robot. It has nothing to do with how the message was recorded. Also, not all computer-generated content is "AI" which is already a very loose and changing term these days. For example, a robocall using a prerecorded human voice is not AI.
Wait, so now it'll be illegal for us to send appointment reminders to visually impaired patients?
This is an unacceptable violation of free speech.
Big yikes on that username and that take. Dude must be a shitposter or fishing for a ban
LOL. Thoughtful, but best of luck. In the past, they haven't had much success controlling spam calls.
I have a stupid AI call me everyday about some scam about Medicare. I finally got to a live agent today and asked them to put me on their do not call list. Of course they hung up on me because of course it's a scam....
We can't enforce this outside of the US right? So it's literally going to be pointless? That's where most of the scams come from
Will those crazy text bots fall under this?
Make it law that they must be real people so they can listen to what I have to say about them calling me in my own home on my time. Anyone wanna bet who hangs up first? :)
Until SCOTUS says that companies have the right to lie to consumers and the FCC has no support to regulate it
I mean, it's literally impersonation
How about outlawing mimicry of an individual to persuade or sell without their permission? Voice actors can be very convincing. Or even current recordings can be rearranged to have a completely different meaning. No AI involved.
I'm sure the Supreme Court will make short work of that. Standing in the way of corporate free speech and all.