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Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for the call, providing an incentive for you to return that money unless you want to be inconsiderate. For

Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for the call, providing an incentive for you to return that money unless you want to be inconsiderate. For other callers, like businesses, if the recipient does not mark the call as legitimate, they have the option to discontinue offering calls to that customer in the future or absorb the associated cost. To strike a balance, the cost for the challenge should be small enough for typical calling cases, allowing users to accept the occasional expense if necessary. However, as the calling volume becomes excessive, the cost should increase significantly, serving as a deterrent against excessive or spammy calling behavior. This way, the system encourages genuine calls while discouraging misuse of the service.

coder543 3y ago
> Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for the call, providing an incentive for you to return that money unless you want to be inconsiderate. At most, this "consideration" would extend to a handful of people. In reality, no, most people would not care to mark calls as legitimate, even from friends. > For other callers, like businesses, if the recipient does not mark the call as legitimate, they have the option to discontinue offering calls to that customer in the future or absorb the associated cost. Yes, it would just be part of the cost of doing business. It would be a tax on all phone calls. No one would mark these calls as legit. > This way, the system encourages genuine calls while discouraging misuse of the service. Again, the incentives aren't aligned. It would not work. If you had proposed the opposite, your idea would have a much greater chance of working, but you didn't. If more than a handful of people mark a particular number as having called them illegitimately, then yes, fine that number a large sum of money. That would work. People are incentivized to complain when they receive spam calls and texts. People are not incentivized to confirm that normal calls are normal. Imagine applying this idea to credit card fraud instead of phone calls, so you had to mark every single credit card transaction as legitimate, or else the business gets charged an extra 10 cents. The customer faces no consequences for "forgetting" to mark the charges as legitimate. The people who empathize enough with the business to do that for every single charge would just be faced with a major hassle, and the credit card companies would have a null signal where most "illegitimate" (by default) charges are actually legitimate. People can already contest illegitimate credit card charges, and that system works much better than a default-illegitimate system.
- unsignedint 3y ago
  Personally, I will never call you again if I don't get that dime back. However, it is also possible to design the system in a way that it actually comes with some disadvantages if calls are not marked in a reasonable timeframe. For instance, all the incoming call from that number is blocked if it is not marked within three days. I'm just providing a broad idea, and I'm pretty sure there are different types of details that can make it more workable.
- unsignedint 3y ago
  Also, if anything like this were to be implemented, it would probably be through some sort of SaaS where payment is consolidated, perhaps as a phone bill, etc., instead of charging a credit card for each transaction.

coder543 3y ago

> Under the challenge system, your friend pays a dime for the call, providing an incentive for you to return that money unless you want to be inconsiderate. At most, this "consideration" would extend to a handful of people. In reality, no, most people would not care to mark calls as legitimate, even from friends. > For other callers, like businesses, if the recipient does not mark the call as legitimate, they have the option to discontinue offering calls to that customer in the future or absorb the associated cost. Yes, it would just be part of the cost of doing business. It would be a tax on all phone calls. No one would mark these calls as legit. > This way, the system encourages genuine calls while discouraging misuse of the service. Again, the incentives aren't aligned. It would not work. If you had proposed the opposite, your idea would have a much greater chance of working, but you didn't. If more than a handful of people mark a particular number as having called them illegitimately, then yes, fine that number a large sum of money. That would work. People are incentivized to complain when they receive spam calls and texts. People are not incentivized to confirm that normal calls are normal. Imagine applying this idea to credit card fraud instead of phone calls, so you had to mark every single credit card transaction as legitimate, or else the business gets charged an extra 10 cents. The customer faces no consequences for "forgetting" to mark the charges as legitimate. The people who empathize enough with the business to do that for every single charge would just be faced with a major hassle, and the credit card companies would have a null signal where most "illegitimate" (by default) charges are actually legitimate. People can already contest illegitimate credit card charges, and that system works much better than a default-illegitimate system.

unsignedint 3y ago
Personally, I will never call you again if I don't get that dime back. However, it is also possible to design the system in a way that it actually comes with some disadvantages if calls are not marked in a reasonable timeframe. For instance, all the incoming call from that number is blocked if it is not marked within three days. I'm just providing a broad idea, and I'm pretty sure there are different types of details that can make it more workable.
unsignedint 3y ago
Also, if anything like this were to be implemented, it would probably be through some sort of SaaS where payment is consolidated, perhaps as a phone bill, etc., instead of charging a credit card for each transaction.