Robocalls with AI voices to be regulated under Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the agency says. I’m pretty sure this puts us on the timeline where we eventually get incredible, futuristic tech, but computers and robots still sound mechanical and fake.

  • lewdian69@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    How does this get enforced though? They don’t even enforce their no call list or cut down on junk robo calls as it is.

    • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Don’t undersell the FCC’s rules around robocalling. No, we’re still getting robocalls out the ass, but when it comes from US locations companies get their asses handed to them. The FCC is also the entity that’s pushing the telcos to Make it possible to stop it from overseas sources. The new laws that went in place this year f***** up my twilio automation that was sending me SMS messages on server failures. All of a sudden I have a bunch of paperwork to fill out and a waiting list to be able to send an SMS via API.

      If the FCC wasn’t impeding robocalls as much as it is phones would be useless by now.

      • gazby@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        I also had the same setup and the same result from the A2P bullshit. Switched to email and DeltaChat instead and will be happy when I finish it lol.

          • gazby@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 months ago

            For me that would be swapping out one rug pull for an inevitable other down the road, but thanks for the suggestion ♥️

            • linearchaos@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I was more than willing to pay for them, they want five accounts though. Like give me some way to pay for you that actually makes sense I’m totally down for it.

              • gazby@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                9 months ago

                Absolutely! Services that are provided for free with no (reasonable) way to pay for at a hobby level are a huge bugbear of mine.

      • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        But how stupid would you have to be to take a call from half way around the world and listen to their advice about the upcoming election? A phone call that claims to come from a local politician is a lot more believable if it comes from a local number.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    OK. Enforce it then.

    Block all calls unless you can verify exactly who they’re from. Block all overseas VOIP bullshit. Block calls from any country that doesn’t have the same call verification rules.

    • droans@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Blame the Republicans in Congress.

      It took until last May for the Senate to finally confirm the fifth Commissioner. Per law, they can’t create new rules or regulations when there’s a vacancy.

      Have you noticed that 5G was getting faster and had more coverage until it more or less stopped last year? For the first time in history, Congress did not renew the FCC’s spectrum auction authority. T-Mobile bought a lot of 2.5Ghz spectrum back in 2022 but the FCC couldn’t grant it to them. It wasn’t until a month and a half ago that they could use it… Because Congress passed a bill that granted the authority for auctions held prior to March 2023.

      They’ve also tried going after the VOIP services that don’t follow STIR/SHAKEN or allow robocallers. But they don’t have enough funding to do much more than the minimum. For the very few that they can catch, they first provide a warning period for the company to remove robocallers and correct their systems. If that fails, the FCC then permits carriers to block the provider, but they can’t mandate it.

      Except even that’s not enough. The FCC can’t take actual legal action against the providers, only the robocallers. So quite often, the provider will just change their business name, list different fake people as their executives, and then rejoin the networks as if nothing ever happened. Look up One Owl Telecom - they’ve done this numerous times.

  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It seems like most people are missing “under existing law”

    Nothing is changing. The FCC is simply putting to a vote clarifying that “yes, the prohibitions regarding automated calling apply to AI generated voices too.”

  • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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    9 months ago

    How about this: if I get a robocall advertising a product/service or a politician’s campaign I get that product or service for FREE and if it’s for a politician they lose $25k from their pac or Superfund for each report (which gets donated to their opponent)?

      • YeetPics@mander.xyz
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        9 months ago

        Sounds like a semantic debate. Yes, third parties exist but they don’t get enough votes to win in a FPTP voting system.

        I’ll concede if you can show me where a third party has won a POTUS spot in the last 60 years.Sadly the history tells a different story.

        Maybe the 25k can just go to me as a victim, then.

  • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Does this include google assistant making robocalls or answering my phone on my behalf? I sometimes use it to setup hair cut appointments.

    • Spinny@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Wait you can use Google Assistant to make calls? I just use it to filter out spam calls without answering.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    didn’t this happen a long time ago under Bill Clinton or something? what the fuck happened?