'Call Screening is Aggravating the Rich and Powerful' (msn.com) 97
Apple's call-screening feature, introduced in iOS 26 last year, was designed to combat the more than 2 billion robocalls placed to Americans every month, but as WSJ is reporting, it is now creating friction for the rich and powerful who find themselves subjected to automated interrogation when dialing from unrecognized numbers.
The feature uses an automated voice to ask unknown callers for their names and reasons for calling, transcribes the responses, and lets recipients decide whether to answer -- essentially giving everyone a pocket-sized executive assistant.
Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk said his first reaction when encountering call screening is irritation, though he understands the necessity given the spam problem. Ben Schaechter, who runs cloud-cost management company Vantage, said the feature "dramatically changed my life" after his personal number ended up in founding paperwork and attracted endless sales calls.
The feature uses an automated voice to ask unknown callers for their names and reasons for calling, transcribes the responses, and lets recipients decide whether to answer -- essentially giving everyone a pocket-sized executive assistant.
Venture capitalist Bradley Tusk said his first reaction when encountering call screening is irritation, though he understands the necessity given the spam problem. Ben Schaechter, who runs cloud-cost management company Vantage, said the feature "dramatically changed my life" after his personal number ended up in founding paperwork and attracted endless sales calls.
It's always funny to me as an American (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's always funny to me as an American (Score:4, Insightful)
Rich people: we're putting AI into everything, don't call it slop
Also Rich people: wah, I have to deal with AI if I want to spam somebody
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"
Since billions of people believe in him, that wasn't a very good trick.
Re: (Score:2)
And since the "ruling class" is far from a unified, formidable force, their "trick" wasn't very good either.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh it's a great trick if you can do it. Just ask the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Re: It's always funny to me as an American (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They do believe, but they do not see that he has taken over their organizations long ago.
Well, I am atheist, but (organized) religion is clearly a force of evil, maliciousness, greed, arrogance, violence, dishonesty and other negative human qualities.
Re: (Score:2)
so they pretend they do not exist so they can pretend we don't exist? clever bitches!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.
Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. "
-LBJ
Re: (Score:2)
And conspiracy theories are not in fact, fact. Yes, conspiracies exist. But conspirators have actual names and do actual things. Conspiracy theories suggest nameless, faceless perpetrators who do vague, ominous things.
Re: It's always funny to me as an American (Score:2)
You're being a stupid dick again. Conspiracy fact always starts as conspiracy theory.
Re: It's always funny to me as an American (Score:5, Insightful)
A statement only a conspiracy theorist would believe.
No, real conspiracies are specific and involve real, actual people. Some real conspiracies include:
- The Iran-Contra affair
- The tobacco industry coverup of cancer risks from tobacco
- Edward Snowden exposed real NSA conspiracies to surveil Americans
- The Watergate cover-up
None of these started with conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are vague and shadowy:
- "The government" shot up Sandy Hook Elementary in order to bring about stricter gun control
- "The government" destroyed the World Trade Center towers to justify war
- "The elite" drank the blood of children in a quest for immortality
None of these will lead to conspiracy fact.
Re: (Score:2)
There are evolutionary factors at work. Because conspiracy theories have no substance, they need to be vague so that many of those weak of mind can find their own baseless suspicions in there. They need to be "extensible" so the morons believing them can think they are contributing to "uncover" things by adding to them. And they need to be on some topic with high emotional engagement.
Come to think of it, the current AI hype has a lot of similarities with a conspiracy theory.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes indeed, AI conspiracy theories abound, such as that the ruling class is building it to take control of all the money and all the regular people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say that everybody in every class, works to make money, and tries to make as much as they can. So that's not something that distinguishes this mythical "ruling class" from the rest of us.
The very phrase conveys jealousy. "They have more than I have, therefore there must be a conspiracy that gives them more money than me." Unless you're Elon Musk, there will always be people who make and have more money than you. And there is no threshold above which only a conspiracy or evilness can explain the relative
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is nothing unfair or unethical about rent-seeking. That's what it means to be a landlord. You risk your money to buy a property, and if someone wants to rent it from you, everybody benefits. If somebody doesn't rent it from you, YOU lose, the renter does not. The rewards go to those who take risks.
Monopolizing, we agree, is evil. But this has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
"Incest" with government sounds awful, but I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that, so I can't comment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So maybe you shouldn't use phrases like "rent-seeking" to describe what you consider evil, if what you really think is evil, is trying to monopolize the market. We can agree on that. Or "when business gets in bed with government"...we can agree on that too. But neither of those things are "rent-seeking," which is not a problem.
Be careful, phrases, like "military-industrial complex" may indicate that you are a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theories are not real they are the delusions of the paranoid. Yes,
Re: (Score:2)
And are you really suggesting that the "military-in
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, got it, rent-seeking is a code phrase on the left, like "woke" on the right. It apparently encompasses every abuse that "the rich" impose in their greedy quest. That Wikipedia article is a soup of progressive buzzwords: income inequality, regulatory capture, crony capitalism, extractive elite, social dystopia.
Of course, there is a real military-industrial complex, but not in the sense that it is most often used today, as describing a vast conspiracy to funnel money to political cronies. Is there some cr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You might be surprised to learn that I am anti-MAGA. I never voted for Trump, and though my leanings are conservative, the Trump administration is not conservative.
Sure, I want to "win" discussions, but more than that, I want to have an intelligent conversation. Yes, I understand that "rent-seeking" is a term that has been in use for a long time, a fact I learned from the Wikipedia article. However, there are opposing schools of thought in economics, such as unrestrained capitalism, managed capitalism (my p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You started this thread by responding to my comment about conspiracy theories not being real, to which you responded that the "ruling class" was indeed part of a vast conspiracy to take money from regular people. My contention is that the "ruling class" does not exist, not in the way you are insinuating. Conspiracies do exist, but conspiracy theories are always false.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't say the word "conspiracy" but you certainly did reply to my post https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org] where I said this:
Yes indeed, AI conspiracy theories abound, such as that the ruling class is building it to take control of all the money and all the regular people.
And to that, you replied:
Isn't why "the ruling class" does anything? (The money part, at the very least?)
So yes, you did suggest that conspiracy theories are real.
Click the link, it's right there. Maybe you should try to be more consistent in your posts, you wouldn't have to remember what you said.
Re: (Score:2)
neither does rich people meet and discuss how to advance their position - the latter is a conspiracy theory, in fact.
Really? [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
When we noticed that we have a ruling class. It doesn't happen very often because they are careful to hide themselves. But every now and then they peek their heads out and we notice. Then we go back to sleep.
The only time we notice them is when they start publicly whining that us lesser beings have had a minor negative impact on their lives. Like in this instance. We've gotten a feature that slightly slows down robocalls and such, but it means they sometimes have to jump through a minor hoop to harass us peons instead of just being able to direct harass us the second they get the whim.
Our ruling class is a bunch of fairytale princesses, determined to whine about the pea under their six mattresses.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. Small, pathetic people with no resilience. While that is certainly not the intended effect, I am glad I am not one of these. They are basically getting nowhere with their personal development and are hence wasting their lives.
Re: It's always funny to me as an American (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I know ist is reeeeeally hard for you, but at least try to be a tiny bit original?
Re: (Score:2)
They are dismantling the sleeping middle class. More and more people are becoming poor. We are their cattle. We are being bred for slavery.
- They Live, 1989
Holy shit, that was 37 years ago. Nothing has changed.
Re: (Score:2)
If the American people have a ruling class it's only because they continue to vote for them.
Re: It's always funny to me as an American (Score:2)
America has never been a democracy. Our institutions are designed to prevent it from being one.
Re:It's always funny to me as an American (Score:4, Insightful)
The funny thing is, Apple is also controlled by super-rich people. So are they aggravating themselves? Why would they do that? Clearly, some rich people's goals are contrary to other rich people's goals. The "ruling class" as you call them, isn't a unified body, but rather, a chaos of conflicting goals and desires for supremacy. This conflict is what keeps them from truly becoming and all-powerful "ruling class."
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you sure the Apple execs don't have access to a bypass API?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh now that's funny! That's a tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory if I've ever heard one!
Re: (Score:2)
Shiny side out.
America! (Score:4, Insightful)
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
-- Group of white men, landowners, and many of them slave owners. That were initially not willing to give non-landholding white men the right to vote, let alone any non-man or non-white.
Annoying to everyone, bad journalist (Score:2)
What I take away from this article is the journalist is a moron that either thinks call screening is not annoying to everyone else, or somehow thinks the rich and powerful are different than anyone else (besides being rich and powerful).
We put up with it because the spam callers are far more annoying.
Re:Annoying to everyone, bad journalist (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"This is literally how our society and journalism functions"
Rich fucks own society and the media
Re:Annoying to everyone, bad journalist (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're so rich and powerful in the first place why are they calling anyone? Shouldn't they have servants for something like that?
Re: (Score:1)
They have people who will call you to rip you off directly or to tell you things to change your thinking so they can rip you off later.
Between 1 and 100 how upset were you when Hillary aborted and ate her baby on national TV?
When a rich person cals me ... (Score:1)
... it's almost always because I have something he wants, usually money for his election campaign but sometimes just my vote.
It's not actually him though, it's usually a robo-call or someone working or vollunteering for his campaign.
Note: I get the same from non-wealthy politicians.
Re: (Score:2)
They use servants to get their laundry. But when they want to meet a new vendor to discuss buying 10,000 specialized computer chips, they call them up directly.
Re: Annoying to everyone, bad journalist (Score:1)
Call screening was first Introduced by Google around 1 year back. Then picked up by others and finally by apple. I had been waiting for iPhone to get it since ages and trying apps like truecaller in the meantime
OH NOES! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, I was not aware of this feature and enabled it IMMEDIATELY.
Re: (Score:2)
I know I get more spam calls now that I've had this enabled for a few months. It seems all it is doing is to let the spambots know that my phone number is active and they'll keep trying with different caller id numbers.
Re: OH NOES! (Score:1)
:) Ya that too. I have now started picking up every unknown number call without actually putting the phone to my ear. They keep doing hello hello and hang up. Once that happens a few times they blacklist my number in their databases as this actually costs them time & money. Hopefully their databases propagate or sync with each other. Without this the calling is all automated so the computer never gets tired if you donâ(TM)t pickup, it just calls again next day. Some of them have a feature where the
Wilhoit's Law (Score:5, Informative)
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"
To conservatism I would add billionaireism.
[note that this is not Wilhoit the academic political philospher, but a different Wilhoit]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"
And yet Socialism explicitly has The Party. And inside The Party is the Politburo. They may change the names but the functions are the same. Orwell called them Inner Party and Outer Party.
The sociopaths who claw their way to the top of a governmental hierarchy never accept that the laws should apply to them.
Re: (Score:3)
This so-called law is a caricature of modern Trumpism, and has nothing to do with conservatism. Trump himself, has nothing to do with conservatism.
Conservatism is a philosophy of limited government, the right to personal property, and equal justice for all, among other things. Lots of people *call* themselves conservative, but are not.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Conservatism is the sidekick of "Progressivism" and exists to ensure that nothing the "Progressives" do is ever rolled back.
This is why Conservatives have never conserved anything of value. "Conservative" is at least as much of a lie as "Progressive."
If Conservatives didn't exist, Progressives would have to create them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is very muddled logic. Conservatives do their best to roll back what Progressives do.
And before you go there, I'll remind you that Trump is not conservative, he is *populist.*
Re: (Score:2)
Way to generalize there. So you know the motivation of every conservative, do you?
If it's marketing, it's worked, because I believe in it.
I just let ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I spent a few hours investigating how I can forward an incoming "Spam Likely" call to Lenny, but apparently it's not possible while still incoming. I would find that a much more valuable feature than call screening.
Re: (Score:2)
Caller ID plus a whitelist? My caller ID has the name, number and an optional "spam" tag before I pick up the phone.
Asterisk might work to divert the calls as appropriate.
What is FinOps ? (Score:2)
FinOps is a cloud financial management discipline that promotes collaboration between engineering, finance, and business teams to optimize cloud spending and maximize business value. It emphasizes data-driven decisions, cost accountability, and continuous improvement rather than just cutting
Aggravating the rich and powerful you say? (Score:2)
*turns feature on* Thanks for the tip!
Re: (Score:1)
*turns feature on* Thanks for the tip!
It stops two or three per day for me. So far, no legitimate callers (but not in my contacts) have complained or even mentioned it, which surprises me a bit. Missing a call I wanted to get was my only hesitation for turning it on, but so far it hasn't been an issue.
Wait a second (Score:2)
Fuck (Score:2)
the rich and powerful.
Call screening annoys normal people (Score:2)
It does not annoy the rich and powerful. It annoys the (human) executive assistants of the rich and powerful, but that's what they get paid for.
News Flash to the Rich and Powerful (Score:2)
It wouldn't be aggravating you at all if you hadn't fired your personal assistant Dolores!
Them...or their assistants (Score:2)
I mean...I know of people who literally don't even answer their own phone. I mean..yes...they do; but the phone they answer is number that's known to only one other person...and no one gets to *that* person without getting through an answering service.
Outside of conference calls...I don't many rich and powerful people who actually call. It's always the assistant or someone else. They don't really care about the assistants outside of difficulty in keeping them over call screening....despite the fact their bu
The Poor Rich People (Score:2)
Why has no one considered that the VCs, who got rich funding companies that spam us endlessly, may be inconvenienced by the solutions we use to deal with the problem they created?!
Wonâ(TM)t anyone think of the billionaires?!
simple solution (Score:5, Funny)
Build a feature into iOS that immediately accesses the caller's bank balance. If it's over a certain amount, the caller needn't go through screening. This will restore sanity and balance to this untenable situation.
Re: (Score:2)
And Apple can collect 30%. Everyone wins!
Re: (Score:2)
It's funny... I scratch my head when I see stories like this, up here in Canada we have a Do Not Call Registry and laws regarding it that actually have teeth. Get a robocall and they get a fine. Per call that's reported.
I haven't got a robocall in years. For a while I started getting spam text messages until I convinced the Do Not Call Registry folks that the law as written (specifying solicitation 'telecommunications' were what were prohibited), and even that stopped.
Bug your congressman for this. It a
the irony (Score:1)
they killed the phone system (Score:2)
it is crazy that scammers are essentially shutting down Plain Old Telephone System.. a network that has been rock-solid for what,150 years! for sure, they’ll be at it until it has taken its last breath. so sad that greed can do so much damage.
The rich and powerful loved this in the early 00's (Score:1)
This is not a new idea. There was a company in the late 90's and early 00's called Wildfire! that provided a voice automated attendant/assistant that answered your phone calls for you. Screened would be a better word though. Many rich and powerful from the celebrity end subscribed to and had our service (Howard Stern for one. He talked about Wildfire from time to time on his radio show.). I loved the product, I miss the product. Too bad they're gone now. It was something that was FAR ahead of its tim
Heaven Forbid (Score:2)
the rich wanted deregulation (Score:2)
If you still answer your phone every time it rings, you're probably over 80. I think I turned my ringer off 10 years ago. No notifications, no dings, nobody can reach me when they need to. All hail enshittification! The enshittification has hit the mobile devices the hardest. Mobile gaming - shit. Mobile UI - shit. Mobile apps - shit. Mobile web - you get the idea.
A flashback to the 1980's... (Score:2)
My father at work calling someone else on a different floor...
Father: "Is Dave available?"
Secretary: "May I tell him who's calling?"
Father: "Does it matter?"
Yes, my father would do this at work. He thought it was disrespectful to immediately screen calls like that. Especially when he was the boss calling someone to get an update on a project he assigned.
Can't wait to tell him I'm turning this on my phone. :D
Good! (Score:2)
The very rich and powerful need to be painfully in touch with the day-to-day aggro experienced by regular folks. They spend far too much time feeling and acting as though they're somehow better than the rest of us.
Happened on TV (Score:2)
We have had this happen in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" when someone wanted to use a telephone joker.
The host just lied using a (more) famous person's name and was accepted.
Later they wanted to call a different person and accidentally called the same number again, having to repeat the process.
Don't they know how important I am? (Score:2)
Me too (Score:2)
Ben Schaechter, who runs cloud-cost management company Vantage, said the feature "dramatically changed my life" after his personal number ended up in founding paperwork and attracted endless sales calls
It dramatically changed my life too, in a good way. Ever since the upgrade to iOS26, my phone became completely silent from calls/texts of the scammers. People who actually want to have a legitimate conversation with me will always say their name and I always accept their calls.