Futel

77 pointsposted a year ago
by 082349872349872
(futel.net)

12 Comments

MrMcCall

a year ago

I think this is a nice idea, a way to serve the underserved. However, from the front page:

> We do not judge the motivations of our users

In an age of doxing, swatting, and cold-calling telemarketers, I hope that some tracability (at least by the network operators themselves) is in there.

What is really needed everywhere is personal responsibility and accountability, but, seeing as how that's in short supply on Earth, we need dogs to guard our chicken coops.

Good luck with your good intentions; I hope it is a help to society, and not another brick in the wall of technological misery.

Etheryte

a year ago

As far as I can tell, what they provide is essentially old school phone booths, just without requiring a coin. That is as anonymous as it used to be, just now it's free. It doesn't really work for scams or etc in any modern sense because it doesn't scale. You can only have one call going at a time.

CoastalCoder

a year ago

The upside of accountability is that is helps prevent/remediate bad actions.

But anonymity can be a crucial tool for resisting evil regimes.

I wish there were a perfect solution.

MrMcCall

a year ago

It appears to be an extremely difficult problem involving serious tradeoffs in each direction.

The only real solution is to have honorable actors on both sides: the citizenry and their govt.

What that means is that we're left with, at best, trying to find the second best solution.

guerrilla

a year ago

Who's to say this isn't a honeypot? It sounds like it's organized by anarchists, but if I were a three-letter agency making a honeypot, that's exactly how I'd sound too.

Rygian

a year ago

Nothing is free. In this case, the Support page seems to imply that this runs free thanks to donations and volunteering, and some time-bounded (and finished) contributions from public actors.

I would kindly ask anyone stating that they provide a service for free, to explain exactly how they are planning on financing it, and for which amount of time, so that users can decide how much trust to place on its survival, and how risky it is to build a dependence on it.

ossobuco

a year ago

There's always someone who doesn't get it. It's free to the user, that's always implicit when you read "free".

We all know that money doesn't grow on trees, no need to treat us like children.

> so that users can decide how much trust to place on its survival, and how risky it is to build a dependence on it

Dependence? This is for people who have no other access to phone calls. I find it funny to complain about such a service when there is no alternative for the target users.

Rygian

a year ago

> that's always implicit when you read "free".

Explicit is always better than implicit, when the word "free" is used.

> Dependence? This is for people who have no other access to phone calls. I find it funny to complain about such a service when there is no alternative for the target users.

That's exactly the point.

Should target users treat these phones as a reliable alternative? Or should they make it one of their first priorities to gain some other access to phone calls? That question remains unanswered, and I argue it is very important for the target users.