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The phone system is a perfect example of why literally nobody other than a few tech purists wants federated communications systems. It astounds me how many stil

by cletus 5y ago

The phone system is a perfect example of why literally nobody other than a few tech purists wants federated communications systems. It astounds me how many still cling to what (IMHO) is an unworkable ideal. The only thing that has made email remotely usable is that the service is concentrated in a few providers who spent a huge amount of effort to minimize the spam. It's classic tragedy of the commons. Obviously we don't have authenticated caller identity in the phone system and you can argue that would solve the problem of spam. No argument it would help but I very much doubt it would solve it. For awhile you were able to IM Gmail users from outside Gmail (through XMPP). This was unsurprisingly shut down because the likes of Microsoft (Hotmail) didn't reciprocate (ie Hotmail users could message Gmail users but not the other way around). Spam on phone networks continues because bad actors profit from it. For example, spam traffic is "laundered" with legitimate traffic so the exchange itself isn't blocked by other parties. It also gives plausible deniability. These things are all inevitable consequences of federated communications systems.

flyinghamster 5y ago
There was a period, over a decade ago now, where I was constantly getting scam calls from certain area codes and prefixes. Looking them up on TelcoData[0], the prefixes and thousands blocks were all from various phone companies I'd never heard of (and had nothingburger websites). It turned out that scammers had set up actual phone companies to carry their traffic. They were not only doing their usual scamming, but also raking in cash from the resulting incoming Caller ID lookups. These have either been shut down or have fallen under the radar. It's a shame that (just like TCP/IP), SS7 was designed in an era of good faith and didn't have security baked into it from the start. [0] https://telcodata.us/ https://telcodata.us/
- Kye 5y ago
  Phreaking is older than SS7. The story itself is as old as civilization. It was an era of naivety and exploitation of that naivety, not good faith. Unauthenticated protocols with no user-controlled access is always a bad idea. TCP/IP has firewalls.
smarx007 5y ago
You understand that federation is what allows you to call someone in New York from Berlin, right? Also, AS peering is a form of federation that allows you to open websites hosted in Netherlands while being in another country. I think I get up to 5 spam calls a year (up in the north of Europe; knock wood).
- specialist 5y ago
  Because your carrier is squashing the other 99% of fraudulent calls.
  - smarx007 5y ago
    I am not arguing with you on that. But my take is that once we notice an abuse of a federated system, we shall take steps to curb the abuse instead of saying "that's all federation's fault"!
gonehome 5y ago
> “ These things are all inevitable consequences of federated communications systems.” Only of ones that have historically existed with these flaws. One of the reasons I think urbit is cool is that the non zero (but low) ID cost solves this economically making spam non-viable and moderation easy. I was also bummed that federated systems seemed to have these core issues that lead to centralization. It’s also why I think the non-urbit attempts at federation are DOA. To fix this for real you need to fix the entire stack. The problem is upstream from the application layer. Your analysis of the flaws inherent in federated systems is right, but you’re wrong that it’s an inevitable consequence - it turns out there is a way to solve the incentive problem and avoid them.
specialist 5y ago
Nailed it. Yes and: Many purists (utopians) continue to oppose infra for authenticated speech. Despite all the evidence, experience, and logic. I wonder if this stubborn naivety comes from our modern geek creation myths. Wasn't it Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) that had some kids conducting a Greek dialog in public, arguing both sides, anonymously, shaping the zeitgeist, thru their amazing rhetoric? As if. If allowed, noise always overwhelms signal. More as the production costs of noise approaches zero, driving the cost of discerning signal up to infinity. (What geekling hasn't read Ender's Game? Imagined themselves as humanity's savior? Huh. Now I wonder what fables Harry Potter reading Millennials will unwittingly foist onto the world, when it's their turn.)
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  That was one of the sequels to Ender's Game.

by cletus 5y ago

flyinghamster 5y ago

There was a period, over a decade ago now, where I was constantly getting scam calls from certain area codes and prefixes. Looking them up on TelcoData[0], the prefixes and thousands blocks were all from various phone companies I'd never heard of (and had nothingburger websites). It turned out that scammers had set up actual phone companies to carry their traffic. They were not only doing their usual scamming, but also raking in cash from the resulting incoming Caller ID lookups. These have either been shut down or have fallen under the radar. It's a shame that (just like TCP/IP), SS7 was designed in an era of good faith and didn't have security baked into it from the start. [0] https://telcodata.us/ https://telcodata.us/

Kye 5y ago
Phreaking is older than SS7. The story itself is as old as civilization. It was an era of naivety and exploitation of that naivety, not good faith. Unauthenticated protocols with no user-controlled access is always a bad idea. TCP/IP has firewalls.

smarx007 5y ago

You understand that federation is what allows you to call someone in New York from Berlin, right? Also, AS peering is a form of federation that allows you to open websites hosted in Netherlands while being in another country. I think I get up to 5 spam calls a year (up in the north of Europe; knock wood).

specialist 5y ago
Because your carrier is squashing the other 99% of fraudulent calls.
- smarx007 5y ago
  I am not arguing with you on that. But my take is that once we notice an abuse of a federated system, we shall take steps to curb the abuse instead of saying "that's all federation's fault"!

gonehome 5y ago

> “ These things are all inevitable consequences of federated communications systems.” Only of ones that have historically existed with these flaws. One of the reasons I think urbit is cool is that the non zero (but low) ID cost solves this economically making spam non-viable and moderation easy. I was also bummed that federated systems seemed to have these core issues that lead to centralization. It’s also why I think the non-urbit attempts at federation are DOA. To fix this for real you need to fix the entire stack. The problem is upstream from the application layer. Your analysis of the flaws inherent in federated systems is right, but you’re wrong that it’s an inevitable consequence - it turns out there is a way to solve the incentive problem and avoid them.

specialist 5y ago

Nailed it. Yes and: Many purists (utopians) continue to oppose infra for authenticated speech. Despite all the evidence, experience, and logic. I wonder if this stubborn naivety comes from our modern geek creation myths. Wasn't it Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card) that had some kids conducting a Greek dialog in public, arguing both sides, anonymously, shaping the zeitgeist, thru their amazing rhetoric? As if. If allowed, noise always overwhelms signal. More as the production costs of noise approaches zero, driving the cost of discerning signal up to infinity. (What geekling hasn't read Ender's Game? Imagined themselves as humanity's savior? Huh. Now I wonder what fables Harry Potter reading Millennials will unwittingly foist onto the world, when it's their turn.)

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
That was one of the sequels to Ender's Game.