4 ms·

>People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? bot

by lsc 9y ago

>People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? both of those have huge amounts of bad actors and spam, and people still use them as primary means of communication. Email and phone are generally expected to be more reliable, I think, than any of the walled garden communication protocols. (Speaking of, if you have ideas about curbing phone spam other than keeping the number secret, do let me know.)

TuringTest 9y ago
At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.
- Kihashi 9y ago
  Not sure about elsewhere, but in the US, it is possible to spoof phone numbers. The only way to verify that the person you are talking to is actually associated with the number is to hang up and call them back. This is particularly a problem for companies like banks and insurance. Android actually does provide some amount of filtering[1], but if someone, say, spoofs a seemingly legitimate number, it will come through fine. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-now-shows-a-warning-about-spam-callers-and-makes-it-easy-to-block-and-report-them-apk-download/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-n...
  - lsc 9y ago
    I've seen similar applications for ios, but they all seemed to want permissions I wasn't so happy to give to some rando. If apple provided the service, I'd probably be okay with it, but I'm not super comfortable feeding my entire contact list and all my call metadata to some random third party
- lsc 9y ago
  Is this something the phone company implements? or that your phone implements?
jameshart 9y ago
I'm explicitly questioning "people still use them as primary means of communication" Really? Even internal company phone systems have largely switched over to walled garden voip or videocalling systems in most places I've seen. Nobody calls anybody any more - the only use of phones I see is for dialling in to conference bridges. Email is used internally within businesses. What do people really still use public phones and email for?
- lsc 9y ago
  >What do people really still use public phones and email for? My impression is that inter-company communications all go over email and public phone. Intra-company,of course, you use the company's walled garden, if the company is large enough to dream of forcing the world into their garden (as most of the companies I've worked for lately have been.) but even so, interviewing is conducted through public phone systems. In fact, even when I'm interviewing a candidate on behalf of my current employer, half the time the connection between the internal walled garden voice system and POTS is so bad I end up using my personal cellphone. Silicon valley companies are serious about 'dogfooding' to the point where actually doing your job sometimes feels like a secondary concern. Smaller players tend to use existing technologies, and so more often use federated systems. I have worked at smaller places, earlier in my career; I've even setup VOIP for one of those places, but it was still terminated to a POTS T1; it just used SIP lines and asterisk rather than a wired PBX, and they mostly used public email (I mean, their own email server, but it was federated email) - those are still federated systems. I'm currently considering going to college; today, I scheduled a bunch of academic stuff, using the phone and email. If I end up locking myself into an institution, of course, then we will probably switch to using their walled garden, because they will have the power to force me to do so, but until that happens? we're communicating via federated systems. Whenever I'm scheduling a medical appointment outside of my primary hmo? I use the phone. My impression is that the walled gardens are mostly used in places where the relationship has been established, and one party is big enough to have built a walled garden system, and important enough to force the other party to eat the dogfood in question. Within my primary HMO, I use the proprietary 'secure messaging' application to communicate with my doctor. Within the company, I use the company's messaging system and screen sharing system. My own conclusion is that forcing you to login and use my communications system is a power move; everyone is still dreaming of replacing email with something more profitable.

by lsc 9y ago

TuringTest 9y ago

At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.

Kihashi 9y ago
Not sure about elsewhere, but in the US, it is possible to spoof phone numbers. The only way to verify that the person you are talking to is actually associated with the number is to hang up and call them back. This is particularly a problem for companies like banks and insurance. Android actually does provide some amount of filtering[1], but if someone, say, spoofs a seemingly legitimate number, it will come through fine. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-now-shows-a-warning-about-spam-callers-and-makes-it-easy-to-block-and-report-them-apk-download/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-n...
- lsc 9y ago
  I've seen similar applications for ios, but they all seemed to want permissions I wasn't so happy to give to some rando. If apple provided the service, I'd probably be okay with it, but I'm not super comfortable feeding my entire contact list and all my call metadata to some random third party
lsc 9y ago
Is this something the phone company implements? or that your phone implements?

jameshart 9y ago

I'm explicitly questioning "people still use them as primary means of communication" Really? Even internal company phone systems have largely switched over to walled garden voip or videocalling systems in most places I've seen. Nobody calls anybody any more - the only use of phones I see is for dialling in to conference bridges. Email is used internally within businesses. What do people really still use public phones and email for?

lsc 9y ago
>What do people really still use public phones and email for? My impression is that inter-company communications all go over email and public phone. Intra-company,of course, you use the company's walled garden, if the company is large enough to dream of forcing the world into their garden (as most of the companies I've worked for lately have been.) but even so, interviewing is conducted through public phone systems. In fact, even when I'm interviewing a candidate on behalf of my current employer, half the time the connection between the internal walled garden voice system and POTS is so bad I end up using my personal cellphone. Silicon valley companies are serious about 'dogfooding' to the point where actually doing your job sometimes feels like a secondary concern. Smaller players tend to use existing technologies, and so more often use federated systems. I have worked at smaller places, earlier in my career; I've even setup VOIP for one of those places, but it was still terminated to a POTS T1; it just used SIP lines and asterisk rather than a wired PBX, and they mostly used public email (I mean, their own email server, but it was federated email) - those are still federated systems. I'm currently considering going to college; today, I scheduled a bunch of academic stuff, using the phone and email. If I end up locking myself into an institution, of course, then we will probably switch to using their walled garden, because they will have the power to force me to do so, but until that happens? we're communicating via federated systems. Whenever I'm scheduling a medical appointment outside of my primary hmo? I use the phone. My impression is that the walled gardens are mostly used in places where the relationship has been established, and one party is big enough to have built a walled garden system, and important enough to force the other party to eat the dogfood in question. Within my primary HMO, I use the proprietary 'secure messaging' application to communicate with my doctor. Within the company, I use the company's messaging system and screen sharing system. My own conclusion is that forcing you to login and use my communications system is a power move; everyone is still dreaming of replacing email with something more profitable.