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The innovation needed here is for everyone to be able to have a premium rate phone number, and be able to set fee rates for contacts or "classes" of callers. Sp

The innovation needed here is for everyone to be able to have a premium rate phone number, and be able to set fee rates for contacts or "classes" of callers. Spam & robocalls need to become too cost-prohibitive to pursue. Everyone's time has value, so it seems mad that we can't set fees for incoming calls or texts.

LadyCailin 3y ago
I find it interesting that Americans are so afraid of regulation that suggestions like these get thrown out in response to calls for regulation. Just effectively regulate via government and move on. Don’t make everything a private toll thing.
- kortilla 3y ago
  What would you like to regulate that is better than letting people set inbound fees?
  - ianlevesque 3y ago
    How about banning calling people with robots? Then enforcing it.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      How about appointment reminders from my doctor? Should those be banned?
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        Obviously you would need an exception for calls you've given consent to receive. But then companies would stick consent in every form license on the internet. So you'd need some kind of cookie banners that require you to give consent explicitly. But then you might miss the box you actually wanted to check opting in to appointment reminders from your doctor and then miss your appointment. So maybe we allow default opt in under some byzantine circumstances that require everyone to hire a lawyer to understand which also has the effect of exempting political donors so that everyone can continue to be inundated with calls. What was the downside of letting people set inbound fees again?
        ghaff 3y ago
        Theoretically you already need to have a relationship with the sender today. Set an inbound fee and some people will set a high fee which catches the unwary and many legit senders simply will refuse as a matter of policy.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The obvious implementation would warn the caller that there is a fee and tell them how much it is, and then notify the recipient if they had a caller who refused the charge and provide their number. Robocallers might then refuse the call if there is any fee at all, which is great, and then if you get the one from your doctor's office you see it in the call log and can exempt the number for next time.
        ghaff 3y ago
        Make it hard for people to reach you and they’ll be happy to just hang up. They have better things to do than get through to people playing elaborate games. It’s usually hard enough to connect to a doctor’s office as it is without expecting them to jump through hoops to get you on the phone.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        "Press 1 to pay $0.10 and connect the call" is an elaborate game? It doesn't happen to anyone who regularly calls you because you've exempted them but it handles the case of someone you know calling from an unusual number with something important, because they just pay the pittance. But spammers can't afford to do that at scale, and if they can you can raise it to $0.25.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > "Press 1 to pay $0.10 and connect the call" is an elaborate game? [...] > It doesn't happen to anyone who regularly calls you because you've exempted them Yes, this sounds like an elaborate game and putting unnecessary burden on me.
      - Beldin 3y ago
        Why would you need to receive an automated voice call for a reminder?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why would you need to receive an automated voice call for a reminder? Because they want to. The burden of evidence is on the side trying to restrict what others do.
        tass 3y ago
        Not everyone can read texts as easily as the majority of the population. Some people can’t read at all.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      There are many downsides to banning robocalls outright. Robocalls are a weird bill to die on, but this kind of “just ban it” mindset creates a lot of invisible loss in our world. Better is to let people put a price on the externality and let the market figure out the rest.
      - Beldin 3y ago
        As someone who has never lived in a country where automated calls happen: what quality of life do you imagine I've been missing out on? Just to note: we do get appointment reminders here.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        > this kind of “just ban it” mindset creates a lot of invisible loss in our world. Such as? > Better is to let people put a price on the externality and let the market figure out the rest. How is that better than just requiring these callers to get your consent first?
  - elmepo 3y ago
    Instead, let me ask you this: why is this a uniquely American problem. Certainly I don't hear about it frequently happening in other countries.
    - greycol 3y ago
      While I think a proposed "inbound fees" soloution is a ridiculous one other countries do not have spam calls figured out. The reason it happens so much more in the U.S. more than other countries is the ease of exfiltrating money from an enviroment where on average you can get a wealthy target (relatively, even if someone is living paycheck to paycheck if they're paying $4000 in rent it's a pretty big paycheck worth targeting). If the US starts to get on top of spam calling there's a very real chance that the countries it doesn't happen often in will 'enjoy' a similar level of spam as established scammers retarget their efforts. The good news is the US telcos are forced to do a lot of the heavy lifting in forcing foreign telcos they connect with to begin using SHAKEN/STIR protocols. This means that other countries (which are in just as bad a technical position as the US) will be able to pass similar regulation on their telcos, without having to worry about accidentally forcing them to cut off entire other countries, as most legitimate telcos will have cut their teeth while dealing with the US telcos. N.B. SHAKEN/STIR protocol requirements basically means that you can identify a call and say to a foreign connecting telco "Here are these identifiable calls that are a problem, I'm sure it's not you so go talk to the smaller telco you provide services for that you can identify with these number (even if we can't) because we don't want to be forced to cut you off". It basically removes the deniability of "Well we've got 10 smaller sub telcos servicing the country/countries and no system implemented to tell which of the 10 is selling to bad actors" because it enforces having a system going out and if your not getting your sub telcos to use shaken/stir on the way in you're the problem.
    - kalleboo 3y ago
      Phone calls to mobile phones are much more expensive in other countries. In the US, mobile phones share their area codes with landlines, and it's the person with the mobile phone who pays for the "airtime" of their incoming (these days it's basically free so you can't tell, but historically it was much more expensive) In the rest of the world, mobile phones have their own special area codes that are charged to a higher rate to the person who is making the call, and incoming calls are free for the mobile subscriber. If you look at the pricing plans for VoIP providers, calling a mobile phone can be up to 10x more expensive than a landline (e.g. I'm seeing for France a landline is 4c/min, a mobile is 17c/min on RingCentral). But calling a US phone of any kind is often even completely free.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    There are industry experts who know the technical answers to your question and lawyers who know the legal ones, why should I have to come up with it myself?
  - amelius 3y ago
    Funnily enough people have stopped using phone calls for anything other than spam, so the problem has solved itself.
- wisconsiway 3y ago
  Spam calls are already generally illegal, it's a matter of enforcement: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/robocalls https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/robocalls
- chaostheory 3y ago
  A lot of people may not like regulation, but that excludes the issue of robocallers and spam marketers. People on both political spectrums support regulation here. The problem is that existing regulation is ignored and not being enforced

LadyCailin 3y ago

I find it interesting that Americans are so afraid of regulation that suggestions like these get thrown out in response to calls for regulation. Just effectively regulate via government and move on. Don’t make everything a private toll thing.

kortilla 3y ago
What would you like to regulate that is better than letting people set inbound fees?
- ianlevesque 3y ago
  How about banning calling people with robots? Then enforcing it.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    How about appointment reminders from my doctor? Should those be banned?
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      Obviously you would need an exception for calls you've given consent to receive. But then companies would stick consent in every form license on the internet. So you'd need some kind of cookie banners that require you to give consent explicitly. But then you might miss the box you actually wanted to check opting in to appointment reminders from your doctor and then miss your appointment. So maybe we allow default opt in under some byzantine circumstances that require everyone to hire a lawyer to understand which also has the effect of exempting political donors so that everyone can continue to be inundated with calls. What was the downside of letting people set inbound fees again?
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Theoretically you already need to have a relationship with the sender today. Set an inbound fee and some people will set a high fee which catches the unwary and many legit senders simply will refuse as a matter of policy.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        The obvious implementation would warn the caller that there is a fee and tell them how much it is, and then notify the recipient if they had a caller who refused the charge and provide their number. Robocallers might then refuse the call if there is any fee at all, which is great, and then if you get the one from your doctor's office you see it in the call log and can exempt the number for next time.
        ghaff 3y ago
        Make it hard for people to reach you and they’ll be happy to just hang up. They have better things to do than get through to people playing elaborate games. It’s usually hard enough to connect to a doctor’s office as it is without expecting them to jump through hoops to get you on the phone.
        AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        "Press 1 to pay $0.10 and connect the call" is an elaborate game? It doesn't happen to anyone who regularly calls you because you've exempted them but it handles the case of someone you know calling from an unusual number with something important, because they just pay the pittance. But spammers can't afford to do that at scale, and if they can you can raise it to $0.25.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > "Press 1 to pay $0.10 and connect the call" is an elaborate game? [...] > It doesn't happen to anyone who regularly calls you because you've exempted them Yes, this sounds like an elaborate game and putting unnecessary burden on me.
    - Beldin 3y ago
      Why would you need to receive an automated voice call for a reminder?
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why would you need to receive an automated voice call for a reminder? Because they want to. The burden of evidence is on the side trying to restrict what others do.
      - tass 3y ago
        Not everyone can read texts as easily as the majority of the population. Some people can’t read at all.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    There are many downsides to banning robocalls outright. Robocalls are a weird bill to die on, but this kind of “just ban it” mindset creates a lot of invisible loss in our world. Better is to let people put a price on the externality and let the market figure out the rest.
    - Beldin 3y ago
      As someone who has never lived in a country where automated calls happen: what quality of life do you imagine I've been missing out on? Just to note: we do get appointment reminders here.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > this kind of “just ban it” mindset creates a lot of invisible loss in our world. Such as? > Better is to let people put a price on the externality and let the market figure out the rest. How is that better than just requiring these callers to get your consent first?
- elmepo 3y ago
  Instead, let me ask you this: why is this a uniquely American problem. Certainly I don't hear about it frequently happening in other countries.
  - greycol 3y ago
    While I think a proposed "inbound fees" soloution is a ridiculous one other countries do not have spam calls figured out. The reason it happens so much more in the U.S. more than other countries is the ease of exfiltrating money from an enviroment where on average you can get a wealthy target (relatively, even if someone is living paycheck to paycheck if they're paying $4000 in rent it's a pretty big paycheck worth targeting). If the US starts to get on top of spam calling there's a very real chance that the countries it doesn't happen often in will 'enjoy' a similar level of spam as established scammers retarget their efforts. The good news is the US telcos are forced to do a lot of the heavy lifting in forcing foreign telcos they connect with to begin using SHAKEN/STIR protocols. This means that other countries (which are in just as bad a technical position as the US) will be able to pass similar regulation on their telcos, without having to worry about accidentally forcing them to cut off entire other countries, as most legitimate telcos will have cut their teeth while dealing with the US telcos. N.B. SHAKEN/STIR protocol requirements basically means that you can identify a call and say to a foreign connecting telco "Here are these identifiable calls that are a problem, I'm sure it's not you so go talk to the smaller telco you provide services for that you can identify with these number (even if we can't) because we don't want to be forced to cut you off". It basically removes the deniability of "Well we've got 10 smaller sub telcos servicing the country/countries and no system implemented to tell which of the 10 is selling to bad actors" because it enforces having a system going out and if your not getting your sub telcos to use shaken/stir on the way in you're the problem.
  - kalleboo 3y ago
    Phone calls to mobile phones are much more expensive in other countries. In the US, mobile phones share their area codes with landlines, and it's the person with the mobile phone who pays for the "airtime" of their incoming (these days it's basically free so you can't tell, but historically it was much more expensive) In the rest of the world, mobile phones have their own special area codes that are charged to a higher rate to the person who is making the call, and incoming calls are free for the mobile subscriber. If you look at the pricing plans for VoIP providers, calling a mobile phone can be up to 10x more expensive than a landline (e.g. I'm seeing for France a landline is 4c/min, a mobile is 17c/min on RingCentral). But calling a US phone of any kind is often even completely free.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  There are industry experts who know the technical answers to your question and lawyers who know the legal ones, why should I have to come up with it myself?
- amelius 3y ago
  Funnily enough people have stopped using phone calls for anything other than spam, so the problem has solved itself.
wisconsiway 3y ago
Spam calls are already generally illegal, it's a matter of enforcement: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/robocalls https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/robocalls
chaostheory 3y ago
A lot of people may not like regulation, but that excludes the issue of robocallers and spam marketers. People on both political spectrums support regulation here. The problem is that existing regulation is ignored and not being enforced