6 ms·
AT&T CEO interrupted by a robocall during a live interview
- xstephen95x 8y agoPR stunt
- lucb1e 8y agoTrue or not, the comment is rather unsubstantiated with just two words.
- reallydude 8y agoMost of the comments are unsubstantiated. So what? The sentiment is succinct. It's a useful contribution insofar that one may upvote, rather than adding to the noise.
- orev 8y agoThis honestly feels staged. I have never seen anyone in any interview receive a call and pull out their phone to see who was calling. So in this ONE case, someone was calling and he had to take out his phone? I imagine CEOs are getting called constantly, even when they are in interviews. How come they never pull out the phone for other calls? Do they just use airplane mode? If so, then why wasn’t it enabled for this interview? Just like most of what AT&T does, this is a lie. To what end I’m not sure. To show everyone their incompetence in dealing with the problem? To try to put pressure on the FCC to make some rules (that AT&T will fight against because it hates regulation)? Or maybe they’re just trying to poke fun at the problem. Edit: OK, so this was on CSPAN, not an actual TV interview. It does seem more natural than something that is clearly staged, so now I have my doubts.
- idDriven 8y agoMy guess is this is leading up to a PR campaign where the industry will make a big deal about how seriously they are tackling the 'newly discovered' issue as an attempt to undercut a push for actual governmental oversight and regulation.
- r_smart 8y agoI mean, if they fix the problem, why would you be upset the government wasn't involved? If the problem persists, we can always have the conversation again. Barring anything else, government solutions tend to be inflexible (which is a feature, but should be much more selectively used).
- nitrogen 8y agoBecause the moment people aren't focused on the issue, it will return.
- r_smart 8y agoI doubt it. It may mutate, but regulation has never stopped that sort of thing. If anything, it gains legitimacy by finding a loophole (technical compliance), and it's unlikely anyone will build the political capital to amend the law. And even if they did, it will just mutate yet again.
- idDriven 8y agoLook at net neutrality, the official corporate statement is of course they support and free and open internet. However "According to lobbying disclosures filed with the U.S. Senate and reviewed by Sludge, Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and their largest trade groups, the Internet and Television Association (NCTA) and CTIA, have spent $190.3 million on lobbying the FCC and other government bodies, much of it to reverse net neutrality, since the 2015 rules were passed." Source: https://readsludge.com/2018/06/11/today-net-neutrality-officially-dies/ https://readsludge.com/2018/06/11/today-net-neutrality-offic...
- r_smart 8y agoAnd the net result of that is what? Why would any business want to have regulations passed dictating what they can do? You can support a free, open internet and still not want regulations dictating your behavior. They aren't mutually exclusive.
- mtmail 8y ago> So in this ONE case, someone was calling and he had to take out his phone? Watch the 19 second video. He didn't take out his phone, it was a notification on his smartwatch.
- orev 8y agoAll of my comment equally applies to people wearing Apple Watches on air. I have never seen anyone receive a call on one, or look at one and take some action. It’s still staged.
- rhacker 8y agoI doubt it is staged. I'm not popular and I get 25 to 30 of these per day. All my calls are permanently forwarded to google voice. I check Google Voice every few days for important things. I've made peace with the notion that if a family member dies I will find out a few days later, but I refuse to get calls from these people that honestly should have their eyes plucked out. And what would be the benefit to ATT to stage this?
- OldFatCactus 8y agothis seems a little extreme
- philwelch 8y agoPlucking their eyes out or forwarding all your calls to GVoice?
- mikestew 8y agoNot OP, but I'm just not willing to sell out my privacy just to deal with robocalls. The eye-plucking, though, that I'm totally okay with.
- OldFatCactus 8y agoGVoice
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 8y ago> OK, so this was on CSPAN, not an actual TV interview CSPAN is actual TV.
- sixstringtheory 8y agoIt’s actual _reality_ TV. We’ve been trained very well not to know the difference any more.
- code_duck 8y agoThe difference is that every second of ‘reality TV’ seems very fake.
- tialaramex 8y ago>I have never seen anyone in any interview receive a call That's nice, but so what? For comparison, actual famous people have been interrupted by telephone calls during the taped (before an audience) panel news/comedy show "Have I Got News For You?" all the time. Real people. Real telephone calls. It happens because a certain type of person when you say "Make sure your phone is off" does not in fact make sure their phone is off, why should they, it's fine, right? And then it rings. Embarrassing. I assume in most cases they just edit it out of the show but if the reaction is especially amusing or they refer back to it in later parts of the show it's easier to leave it in. Because it's a show with actual famous people rather than "real" people there's not really an option to e.g. take their phone away. Who would agree to that if they're famous? "Are you claiming I'm too stupid to turn it off?" Oops. And no, what happens isn't that people like CEOs are constantly in phone calls. They have someone in the middle, a Personal Assistant, paid to take those calls without wasting their time on frivolities. "Hello, Mr Person's office? No I'm afraid he's busy right now, what did you want to talk to him about?". He may or may not be busy, it's just easier to always say that. Every person they give their number to is another person who might waste their time, so most people get the PA's number.
- drugme 8y agoI have never seen X happen. I doesn't happen very often -- but it does happen.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dfgert 8y agoI feel like this for most sensational news stories that I hear on news. Too much agenda in every news pisses me off. I wish there was a way to filter out such agenda.
- azhenley 8y agoContext on the recent media coverage of robocalls: "I Get a Robocall While Making a Video About Robocalls" by Vlogbrothers: https://youtu.be/mNIgh3JMDcQ https://youtu.be/mNIgh3JMDcQ "Robocalls" by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: https://youtu.be/FO0iG_P0P6M https://youtu.be/FO0iG_P0P6M
- tomc1985 8y agoRegarding caller ID spoofing part of these robocalls... I would think the telco knows the number of each connected phone line, why can't they overwrite whatever number the caller supplies?
- toast0 8y agoHistorically, spoofing came from people with Primary Rate Interfaces (PRI, aka calling over T1), where you got to set the outgoing caller id because you might be running inbound calling separate from outbound calling, and you were presumed to know what you're doing. In the last 20 years, give or take, the spoofing comes from VoIP carriers that are interconnected to the traditional telcos where you're receiving the calls. Your carrier has no idea which customer of the other carrier is making the call, only what the other carrier told them. The other carrier may also be passing through calls from another carrier -- there's a lot of traffic mixing going on.
- nitrogen 8y agoA "phone line" is kind of an outdated concept. Even traditional call centers had many numbers carried as digital data over something like a T1 line, and nowadays how do you connect a "line" to a call center running VoIP over a business-grade cable modem connection? The "line" is just metadata, like caller ID.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bluGill 8y agoThey don't know. the phone system was designed on a trust the caller to not lie system...
- munk-a 8y agoWhat if a call is originating from AT&T and going to a Verizon number, AT&T could mark the number as "tots legit" and then Verizon would be unable to tell if AT&T was lying or not, in fact if one company started clamping down then another company might start openly acting as a haven for these sorts of calls and making a lot more money by being the only option to look legit... Finally, if these calls are originating overseas you might have to go through the chinese government to actually try and force a bad acting telco to start cracking down, that sort of pressure would take the US government - while tech companies have some pull overseas a lot of the local service companies (including probably AT&T) have nothing to pressure the chinese government with.
- argd678 8y agoI use google voice to screen my calls, if there was a way on iOS to disable calls not via Google Voice on my phone that would probably solve the robo call problem for me.
- rhacker 8y agoI didn't do this but it has crossed my mind... The fastest way to end robocalls forever: Sign up every damn congressional seat's phone number to ever scammy health insurance, hotel timeshare and PC help desk website's contact me form.
- p1esk 8y agoDo you have a list of their personal cell phone numbers?
- rhacker 8y agoUnfortunately no.
- p1esk 8y agoWell, then I guess it’s not “the fastest way to end robocalls forever“, is it?
- kirubakaran 8y agoWould you accept "second fastest way to end robocalls forever... maybe..."? ;)
- philwelch 8y agoWe briefly had Lindsay Graham's?
- x0x0 8y agoI assume you're aware, but it's known that companies give white-glove treatment to all congresspeople and their family and their friends. From robocalls to health insurance to the credit reporting agencies to comcast, these folks encounter none of the problems regular folks hit.
- DailyHN 8y agoDo you have any examples?
- dfee 8y agoLink to the video: https://mobile.twitter.com/cspan/status/1108422307008184326 https://mobile.twitter.com/cspan/status/1108422307008184326
- monster2control 8y agoHA HA HA HA