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If you're implying phonebooks were a net value add to society I strongly disagree. Needing someones consent (not necessarily the person you're contacting) to co

by toolz 5y ago

If you're implying phonebooks were a net value add to society I strongly disagree. Needing someones consent (not necessarily the person you're contacting) to contact someone should really be the default. Further selling ad space in a book filled with other peoples information and those people who are the unwilling product get nothing but spam calls in return? Seems pretty gross if you ask me.

CamperBob2 5y ago
Back in the day, phone books were pretty damned useful. Of course they no longer are, but arguing that they weren't a "net value add" is absurd. You could easily opt out of being listed in the phone book, and many people did.
- toolz 5y ago
  So your information should be public domain until you opt-out? How is it that somebody else should be making money off of my information and I have to do the extra work to opt-out? That doesn't pass any smell test.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    When you signed up for landline service, they would ask you if you wanted to be listed or not. Sounds more like opt-in if you ask me. I had a friend that allowed his number to be listed on an alias of David King so that in the book it showed up as King, David. It amused him.
    - toolz 5y ago
      That may be true for your friend, but it was not true for me - caller ID would even display names of people who asked to be unlisted. If it was opt-in I would have no issue, but it wasn't for me at least.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        I think the caller ID thing is different. I don't think people should be allowed to opt out of caller ID, except in some pretty narrow cases. If you're going to call someone, you should be required to affirmatively identify yourself. I do agree that an opt-out-required phonebook sounds crazy now, but it didn't back in the 80s and 90s. Mass data collection was not the norm, and all that information wasn't available in digitized form to any person or company who wanted it. So abuse of that data was pretty low.
        toolz 5y ago
        Well you can't really require identification and if you do you're placing undue trust in a system that would make no difference to pro-social users and grant malicious users more trust than is deserved. I agree that phone book data seemed just annoying at the time, but in hindsight it was a bad idea to normalize letting other people sell your data. Just look where we are now - I imagine a society more privacy focused when it was just annoying might not end up in a surveillance state quite so quickly. Hindsight 20/20 and all, so I'm just looking at the past through todays lens and wondering if the modest (at best) convenience was worth the normalization of letting other people sell our data.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      My recollection is that having a totally unlisted number was an extra charge. I think not having your street address listed in the phone book may have been free.
- jfrunyon 5y ago
  No, you could not "opt out" of being listed in the phone book. You could pay to be removed. Furthermore, usefulness does not equal consent.
  - mPReDiToR 5y ago
    In England at least you could opt out for free on landlines in the 90s. When mobile phones started up (back in the ten digit days) you could call a cellular provider and query a number if you had a name. The STD (yes, yes, laugh at the STI joke) prefix used to signal the network the user was on so you could ask Orange for "John Smith" if the number started 0973. This was also free to opt out of.

by toolz 5y ago

CamperBob2 5y ago

Back in the day, phone books were pretty damned useful. Of course they no longer are, but arguing that they weren't a "net value add" is absurd. You could easily opt out of being listed in the phone book, and many people did.

toolz 5y ago
So your information should be public domain until you opt-out? How is it that somebody else should be making money off of my information and I have to do the extra work to opt-out? That doesn't pass any smell test.
- dylan604 5y ago
  When you signed up for landline service, they would ask you if you wanted to be listed or not. Sounds more like opt-in if you ask me. I had a friend that allowed his number to be listed on an alias of David King so that in the book it showed up as King, David. It amused him.
  - toolz 5y ago
    That may be true for your friend, but it was not true for me - caller ID would even display names of people who asked to be unlisted. If it was opt-in I would have no issue, but it wasn't for me at least.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      I think the caller ID thing is different. I don't think people should be allowed to opt out of caller ID, except in some pretty narrow cases. If you're going to call someone, you should be required to affirmatively identify yourself. I do agree that an opt-out-required phonebook sounds crazy now, but it didn't back in the 80s and 90s. Mass data collection was not the norm, and all that information wasn't available in digitized form to any person or company who wanted it. So abuse of that data was pretty low.
      - toolz 5y ago
        Well you can't really require identification and if you do you're placing undue trust in a system that would make no difference to pro-social users and grant malicious users more trust than is deserved. I agree that phone book data seemed just annoying at the time, but in hindsight it was a bad idea to normalize letting other people sell your data. Just look where we are now - I imagine a society more privacy focused when it was just annoying might not end up in a surveillance state quite so quickly. Hindsight 20/20 and all, so I'm just looking at the past through todays lens and wondering if the modest (at best) convenience was worth the normalization of letting other people sell our data.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    My recollection is that having a totally unlisted number was an extra charge. I think not having your street address listed in the phone book may have been free.
jfrunyon 5y ago
No, you could not "opt out" of being listed in the phone book. You could pay to be removed. Furthermore, usefulness does not equal consent.
- mPReDiToR 5y ago
  In England at least you could opt out for free on landlines in the 90s. When mobile phones started up (back in the ten digit days) you could call a cellular provider and query a number if you had a name. The STD (yes, yes, laugh at the STI joke) prefix used to signal the network the user was on so you could ask Orange for "John Smith" if the number started 0973. This was also free to opt out of.