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John Oliver tackles robocalls by flooding FCC with spam calls:
"The host of HBO's Last Week Tonight has come up with a new way to encourage FCC commissioners to take a harder stance on robocalls: by robocalling them. On his show Sunday evening, Oliver debuted a system ... that robocalls FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and fellow commissioners every 90 minutes.
Can we call it treason? I don't think so, this guy is foreign, from U.K. Time to deport?
John Oliver Fights Robocalls. by Robocalling Ajit Pai and the FCC:
Comedian John Oliver is taking aim at the Federal Communications Commission again, this time demanding action on robocalls while unleashing his own wave of robocalls against FCC commissioners.
In a 17-minute segment yesterday on HBO's Last Week Tonight, Oliver described the scourge of robocalls and blamed Pai for not doing more to stop them. Oliver ended the segment by announcing that he and his staff are sending robocalls every 90 minutes to all five FCC commissioners.
"Hi FCC, this is John from customer service," Oliver's recorded voice says on the call. "Congratulations, you've just won a chance to lower robocalls in America today... robocalls are incredibly annoying, and the person who can stop them is you! Talk to you again in 90 minutes—here's some bagpipe music."
[...] When it came to robocalling the FCC, Oliver didn't need viewers' help. "This time, unlike our past encounters [with the FCC], I don't need to ask hordes of real people to bombard [the FCC] with messages, because with the miracle of robocalling, I can now do it all by myself," Oliver said.
"It turns out robocalling is so easy, it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it," Oliver also said. He noted that "phone calls are now so cheap and the technology so widely available that just about everyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls."
It would be a shame to waste all that time between phone calls doing nothing. Maybe John Oliver could be persuaded to add a 100 more people and maybe another 435 people while he's at it?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Saturday March 16 2019, @10:47PM (2 children)
Like anything that restricts assholes from imposing an unsolicited load on others, any such mechanism must be designed to default to "opt-in", with opt-out an actively made choice by the
victimconsumer.Any system that's not designed this way is/was intended to fail.
There are hundreds of millions of people in the USA. There must be 3, maybe even 4, of those who want to experience the unfettered joy of being informed that their non-existent warranty on their vehicle has run out several times a day.
For those people, the ability to opt-in to unsolicited calls is an absolute must.
--
Diapers and Politicians should be changed often.
Both for the same reason.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Sunday March 17 2019, @12:11AM (1 child)
Can I please have a phone plan that charges the caller a buck a call credited to my phone bill, unless I specifically waive the charge from my end?
Such as my dialing "#0" during the call. Dialing it from the other end does nothing.
This technology seems to be available for the sex-chat industry.
I just need the ability to selectively waive the fee much like a merchant can validate a customers parking chit.
This way, we protect the free speech right of. the robocallers to call anyone they want, while allowing the rest of to monetize the unwelcome interrupts.
As business would say... "Win-Win!"
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fluffeh on Wednesday March 20 2019, @04:41AM
Just do what this guy does (it's an old story, but it still is funny):
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23869462 [bbc.com]
Quote from the article: