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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reminds me of the 2600 back covers. There is something of the phreaking / phracking culture to this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210312063737/https://www.2600....
There's a similar project in Philadelphia: https://philtel.org/
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.
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.
As Telstra put it, after making all public payphones free in Australia: "Hugh Jass, Anita Bath, and Ivana Tinkle are always welcome at our payphones".
https://x.com/Telstra/status/1428566347491909640
Dick Hurtz was disappointed he didn't make the list.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.