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I get it, you want to fuck with telemarketers. But "Heaven Banning" [0] is a terrible terrible thing, and I don't like where this is going. [0] https://archive

by im3w1l 3y ago

I get it, you want to fuck with telemarketers. But "Heaven Banning" [0] is a terrible terrible thing, and I don't like where this is going. [0] https://archive.is/hPoAo https://archive.is/hPoAo

luma 3y ago
Are you really advocating for the plight of these poor scammers?
- im3w1l 3y ago
  I think it's worth taking a stand early on, before the tactic is inevitably expanded to include more groups of people.
- Verdex 3y ago
  Personally, I take bigger issue with the people who hire the telemarketer. While I can imagine a person revelling in their telemarketing position, somehow I suspect most people working are just trying to get enough money to not starve before next months paycheck. Regardless of the reality, I get the sentiment. Hey we built this system that can trap humans in an infinite social loop requiring either superhuman willpower or outright sociopathy to escape. But don't worry, we only use it on the bad people.
  - Riverheart 3y ago
    Part of the justification I’ve heard for wasting the scammers time is to limit the number of people they can interact with in a day. If wasting a scammer’s time prevents another innocent person from scammed then there’s a net benefit. It’s unfortunate that some people need to do bad things to make a living but it’s an explanation of bad behavior, not a justification for it. Mind you, I’m also sympathetic to the ways in which this practice could be abused.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    >infinite social loop requiring either superhuman willpower or outright sociopathy to escape Or, you can just hang up if you have your suspicions. I don't see this kind of banning particularly useful. If it gets sufficiently popular, telemarketers will just work around it in their scripts.
kibwen 3y ago
"Heavenbanning" isn't going to be a thing, because it's no more effective than hellbanning while being drastically more expensive for platforms to implement.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  The article describes it working though. It was able to string along some salesman for 5 minutes, much longer than he would wait if someone picked up the phone and said nothing.
  - kibwen 3y ago
    The only reason it works in a telemarketing context is because "hellbanning" doesn't exist for phones, it's a synchronous medium where you need to keep them on the line somehow, as you note. That's not a concern for asynchronous mediums like forums. In addition, banning someone in the context of a forum is the responsibility of the operators of the platform, but stringing along a telemarketer is the responsibility of the individual users of the platform. It's not equivalent to a hellban, it's the equivalent of trolling, but now automated. If it ever started happening in large numbers, the platform operators (the phone companies) would change their terms of service to make it illegal, because having machines trolling each other indefinitely uses up their network capacity for no reason.
sah2ed 3y ago
Heaven Banning is hypothetical, it's not real. At least not yet. If you look closer at the date in the screen shot of a NYT article in your link, you'll see that the date was deliberately chosen to be in the future (i.e. August 8, 2024).
otikik 3y ago
You can always come to HN in order to find contrarian views.
npteljes 3y ago
Why is it so terrible in particular? Regarding information safety on the Internet, I think the cat is long out of the bag now. Forget AI, information is already weaponized at scale. I mean in the way like in this Wiki collection [0]. AI is, while probably powerful, just another tool in this toolbox. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades#Opinion-influencing_operations_in_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades#Opinion-i...
- im3w1l 3y ago
  To preface it's a strong gut feeling that I don't know where exactly it is coming from. So I'm trying to understand it myself. I think the reason I feel so opposed to it is because human connection is one of the most beautiful things. Forming friendships. And heaven banning counter-acts that and counterfeits that. If you find out your friends were fake, in a very literal sense, enough times you may stop trying to find friends. You may fall into a learned helplessness and isolation, where you must scream but there is no real to hear. Only fake phantoms feigning sympathy, gone tomorrow and replaced with new faces.
  - npteljes 3y ago
    Thanks, I think I understand. I think the people in the world could do with more compassion. To stay with the example of telemarketers, my issue is that whoever benefits from the operation is not the one bearing the consequences, the externalities of the deed - I mean, they are not the ones yelled at by the desperate people on the other end of the line. So the operators effectively outsource this misery to the pawns that are the telemarketers. We as a society do this thing often, with everything we don't want to face directly, like the butchering of the animals that we consume. The proper way to go about it would be regulation, I think. For example, to ban telemarketing altogether.

by im3w1l 3y ago

I get it, you want to fuck with telemarketers. But "Heaven Banning" [0] is a terrible terrible thing, and I don't like where this is going. [0] https://archive.is/hPoAo https://archive.is/hPoAo

luma 3y ago

Are you really advocating for the plight of these poor scammers?

im3w1l 3y ago
I think it's worth taking a stand early on, before the tactic is inevitably expanded to include more groups of people.
Verdex 3y ago
Personally, I take bigger issue with the people who hire the telemarketer. While I can imagine a person revelling in their telemarketing position, somehow I suspect most people working are just trying to get enough money to not starve before next months paycheck. Regardless of the reality, I get the sentiment. Hey we built this system that can trap humans in an infinite social loop requiring either superhuman willpower or outright sociopathy to escape. But don't worry, we only use it on the bad people.
- Riverheart 3y ago
  Part of the justification I’ve heard for wasting the scammers time is to limit the number of people they can interact with in a day. If wasting a scammer’s time prevents another innocent person from scammed then there’s a net benefit. It’s unfortunate that some people need to do bad things to make a living but it’s an explanation of bad behavior, not a justification for it. Mind you, I’m also sympathetic to the ways in which this practice could be abused.
- npteljes 3y ago
  >infinite social loop requiring either superhuman willpower or outright sociopathy to escape Or, you can just hang up if you have your suspicions. I don't see this kind of banning particularly useful. If it gets sufficiently popular, telemarketers will just work around it in their scripts.

kibwen 3y ago

"Heavenbanning" isn't going to be a thing, because it's no more effective than hellbanning while being drastically more expensive for platforms to implement.

im3w1l 3y ago
The article describes it working though. It was able to string along some salesman for 5 minutes, much longer than he would wait if someone picked up the phone and said nothing.
- kibwen 3y ago
  The only reason it works in a telemarketing context is because "hellbanning" doesn't exist for phones, it's a synchronous medium where you need to keep them on the line somehow, as you note. That's not a concern for asynchronous mediums like forums. In addition, banning someone in the context of a forum is the responsibility of the operators of the platform, but stringing along a telemarketer is the responsibility of the individual users of the platform. It's not equivalent to a hellban, it's the equivalent of trolling, but now automated. If it ever started happening in large numbers, the platform operators (the phone companies) would change their terms of service to make it illegal, because having machines trolling each other indefinitely uses up their network capacity for no reason.

sah2ed 3y ago

Heaven Banning is hypothetical, it's not real. At least not yet. If you look closer at the date in the screen shot of a NYT article in your link, you'll see that the date was deliberately chosen to be in the future (i.e. August 8, 2024).

otikik 3y ago

You can always come to HN in order to find contrarian views.

npteljes 3y ago

Why is it so terrible in particular? Regarding information safety on the Internet, I think the cat is long out of the bag now. Forget AI, information is already weaponized at scale. I mean in the way like in this Wiki collection [0]. AI is, while probably powerful, just another tool in this toolbox. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades#Opinion-influencing_operations_in_other_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_web_brigades#Opinion-i...

im3w1l 3y ago
To preface it's a strong gut feeling that I don't know where exactly it is coming from. So I'm trying to understand it myself. I think the reason I feel so opposed to it is because human connection is one of the most beautiful things. Forming friendships. And heaven banning counter-acts that and counterfeits that. If you find out your friends were fake, in a very literal sense, enough times you may stop trying to find friends. You may fall into a learned helplessness and isolation, where you must scream but there is no real to hear. Only fake phantoms feigning sympathy, gone tomorrow and replaced with new faces.
- npteljes 3y ago
  Thanks, I think I understand. I think the people in the world could do with more compassion. To stay with the example of telemarketers, my issue is that whoever benefits from the operation is not the one bearing the consequences, the externalities of the deed - I mean, they are not the ones yelled at by the desperate people on the other end of the line. So the operators effectively outsource this misery to the pawns that are the telemarketers. We as a society do this thing often, with everything we don't want to face directly, like the butchering of the animals that we consume. The proper way to go about it would be regulation, I think. For example, to ban telemarketing altogether.