Mastodawn

That is genius!

Update:

LOL, someone reported me to, err, me... The first report I have ever had!

Seems I have to clarify.

All junk calls I get, are either not legal under PECR, or actually fraudulent. I am assuming this is the nature of this call. If not, then not so funny.

I have zero sympathy for someone that works for criminals. Arguing that the only job you can get is working for criminals does not justify it. Sorry. But that is my free speech opinion.

So I won't be suspending myself.

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk I'm not sure you understand how much stress this person has put on a delocalized worker, who's already alienated in normal conditions, having to follow a route made by white collar workers. He may have a family to feed and he isn't the problem himself. He may have been fired, or at best he's lost an hour of paid labor while fearing losing his job, in great distress.

This is only funny for ignorant people, and there's arguably racism in that. Do better.

Nangpa 🇳🇴Jul 31, 2024

Maybe I can't read, but the topic here is not skin colour, nationality or race - not even close...
So, I don't see the racism issue

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@Nangpa @revk Because this kind of call center is often abroad, and because the call operators are often PoC.

Nangpa 🇳🇴Jul 31, 2024

Sorry, @oceane

Fediverse is worlwide with people/users from around the globe and we can't be too "woke" all the time.

I don't mind "woke" people but this got nothing to do with this post by @revk

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@Nangpa @revk Indeed but speaking as a white person I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that when white people think about call center scams they think about brown people. If harming a call center scammer is harming a brown person, then this post is embedded in a racist culture and in racist practices. I didn't say that revk was racist, and I have the luxury not to have to jump to conclusions. I'm just saying, I will repeat, that "there's arguably racism in that".

24😷-185 Jul 31, 2024

@oceane @revk @Nangpa There are call centres in India who make fradulent calls to English-speaking elderly people about their computer.

They are brought down by hackers because Indian authorities won't do anything and are often bribed by local politicians.

The bosses make hundreds of money by selling inefficient computer protections. The cold-callers barely hide their joy when they see a well-fed bank account and when they are caught about lying about their identity, they resort to insults.

Are you seriously suggesting that nothing should be done against that because that would be considered as racism!?

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@240185 @revk @Nangpa Absolutely not! But are you sending this message in the context of national Indian calls, with (1) based on what you say, lacking legal resources due to political corruption, and (2) from my point a view, a negligible number of elderly white people?

I'm saying here that sharing this kind of messages on social media is embedded in racism, and that racism isn't a solution, it's part of everyone's problems with crime, scamming, and so on, because it reinforces a social system based on forcing people to contribute to it to meet their own needs (Adam Smith), and that's been coopted by a class of oppressors, that defend a system waging wars for their own benefits (e.g. natural resources appropriation, such as oil, or even as weapons manufacturers). If this is in the context of national Indian calls, then racism from white people feels irrelevant, isn't it?

I won't improvise myself an Indian activist, but I'm sure that you can find a trust-based network of local orgs in about 15 minutes by querying about any reputable search engine. Racism isn't part of the solution, but lending these orgs a hand on your spare time, sharing their press releases on your account, blogging about them would be. From the top of my head, these would be the solutions I would suggest in this context.

24😷-185 Jul 31, 2024

@oceane @revk @Nangpa I was writing the message thinking about international calls, targetting people in UK or United States from India. But the points you raised are valid, although I wouldn't consider the ratio between the amount of money fraudulently obtained and the number of victims as "negligible".

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@240185 @revk @Nangpa Sure, but then I would encourage you to join local data protection activists. It's all fun and games until you ask which data broker has sold them your contact info.

No need to hurt anyone.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa That gets you nowhere - they just hang up!

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa Threatening them to sue them if they did has worked in the single case I did this. They've indeed hanged up twice, then I've threatened them, then they got concerned.

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa Again, abusing people doesn't disrupt the workplace because it's already a sweatshop built around disciplinary measures.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa OK but *any* measure that works, and gets the place shut down causes those workers to all be out of a job, probably without being paid.

Doing the right thing and getting the bad guys sorted out causes people to lose their jobs.

The trick is not to work for criminals and scammers in the first place.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa I'm impressed. The fraud ones don't have anyone to sue - you don't get any identity of who they are. The junk calls are crap at identifying themselves, I have tried hard on occasion to just get a company name that is not made up. *if* I played along enough to get as far as paying something, maybe I could identify who I paid somehow. But until then, who do you sue.

Well done making progress. But it is a battle, which is the point of the original post.

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa In my case they were contacting me on behalf of SFR, a crappy French ISP, so I could just have sued them.

Oh and I was recording the call.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa I record all calls anyway, but I have had the odd case like that and the company they name obviously deny any wrong doing.

They may, for example, have some sort of referral or commission system, but have in no way authorised or requested junk calls, so why would they care?

I appreciate laws vary on this.

But if you win the nice way, people still lose jobs!

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa I didn't say it would be a bad thing, I said abusing workers was a bad way to do this. They aren't the enemy. Their employer is.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa And to be clear, some of them, especially those working for fraudsters, know exactly what they are doing and have chosen to do, so I see no reason they are "not the enemy" too.

There are those working in a call centre that does sell something vaguely legit even if it fails to follow the rules on junk calls. Those people may not appreciate what they are doing until someone explains it (which I do).

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa I'm sorry but I've only done it once, with the intent of suing the data broker, not the call center. It was a mistake and I won't do this again.

However, there's a difference between this and breaking a sweatshop worker's tools for about an hour, which feels cruel and gratuitous to me. The person has actually lost some of their free time to laugh at a dark-skinned Indian. As I replied to some people denying the racism I was feeling in the cultural context surrounding this post, white people were, indeed, thinking about delocalized PoC.

Other solutions include mandatory phone number prefixes and then apps like AnyCallBlocker IIRC, or training elderly people not to give their bank/insurance credentials over a phone call. The EU has made MFA mandatory for online payments, and so forth.

Part of these solutions include being part of the safety net we're probably voting for, and then getting an actually leftist government training elderly people over deconcentrated, local, convenient, free workshops, in small groups.

There are solutions. None of them imply getting a sweatshop worker worried. I was just saying that this one, as ad hoc as it was, was more efficient. This was a personal, slightly bootlegged personal experience. That was the point.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa Why does everyone have to make things about race, where in the original post did anyone say "dark-skinned Indian"? You are creating a straw man, if I have my false arguments right.

Nangpa 🇳🇴Jul 31, 2024

Just ignore tiling that doesn't agree with your post - this is just too stupid. You start a thread with a topic and suddenly it's about something completely different. 🙄

@oceane @240185

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa No absolutely not; I repeat, I did not mean to imply anything about your intent. I'm a very literal person.

Some people have come into my mentions to deny that there would be racism in the post of which you shared a screenshot, or in the way this post would circulate among white people. Whether it makes Indian people laugh about their own national call center staff is another question. And then someone has come into my mentions about half an hour ago to tell me that there were poorly regulated call centers in India, whose legal owners would corrupt politicians, scamming impoverished elderly people in the US and in the UK, whose workers would be happy to have a nice pay.

This is a very interesting digression topic but for now it just confirms that this topic involves States with hierarchical relationships, a hierarchy which is based on racism, if anything as the mere association of these States to ethno-racial and (perceived) moral traits, involving perceived forms of productivity and work ethics. When white French tourists say during a tour in India that all of our IT industry is there, this is probably deliberate, thought-through antiracism on the field. Anyway, people associate States with morphologies and perceived moral traits. Associating call centers to Southern States is racist in itself so these memes could be considered as dogwhistles.

Please note that free software activists have an extremely – for activists – misogynistic and racist culture. We're sharing blog posts from people who've compared Islam to Nazism or to satiric religions on their blogs in most otherwise decent places, including XMPP chatrooms about permacomputing; and even if I've never seen these blog posts actually shared there, they would be barred from any other activist space, for good reasons, until they would edit and retract, or delete these posts. Our treatment of Stallman's attempt at raping a 14 years-old female teenager is also telling: every activist to whom I've asked their opinion has told me without a second of hesitation that this man was disgusting, and that they absolutely wouldn't want to be around someone tolerating him, but even in the Guix chatroom I was "well, maybe this was a misunderstanding, but even then it was a sexual assault".

This post is nerdy as fuck, and I welcome this, but it warrants extra caution IMO

Caoilte O'Connor Jul 31, 2024

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa I read this as an accusation of racism against @revk - i think it's understandable that he found it upsetting.

"However, there's a difference between this and breaking a sweatshop worker's tools for about an hour, which feels cruel and gratuitous to me. The person has actually lost some of their free time to laugh at a dark-skinned Indian."

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@caoilte @240185 @Nangpa @revk I understand, but I think – speaking as a white person – that this post is incredibly racist indeed, in given cultural contexts. I think it's telling that French people ITT have instantly reached a consensus. This may be telling more about French people than about the OP here.

Second, I think we can define an oppressor as someone on whose behalf someone is oppressed. I don't think women would be oppressed of men's behalf but on the oligarchs', as breeders for the workers they need; I don't think Foxconn workers would be oppressed on iPhone users' behalf, who seldom like their phones, but on Steve Job's, and Larry Page's.

I don't think the solution would be to punish people who are also oppressed by capitalism but to educate and uplift each other. IIRC, I didn't mean to attack anyone.

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@caoilte @240185 @Nangpa @revk To clarify, I'm not interested in people here, but in forms of association.

I don't know the OP. Making any assumption about who they are or what they believe in would be extremely presumptuous; all I know is that my instance is federating with him, on a Twitter survivors network. I know that neurodivergent and trans people are overrepresented here among white people, because of how bullying among white people works; I don't even know if there's a social, cultural equivalent among French PoC. There may be other problems (due to a lack of State funding, due to initiatives similar to the Atlas network, and so forth) but anyway; I also know that attention is unevenly distributed because Twitter was deliberately designed so that white collar workers would be able to craft the best posts while the poor, especially people living with depression, would get lost and confused; but this is about all I can assume about the people here.

We were just collaboratively editing an HTML document. If people want to join us in doing that, that's great, but this isn't about us (even if different mechanisms trick us into believing otherwise). This is just one ActivityPub document among others; the root document remains on the OP's instance.

It would feel pointless in this context to gratuitously attack the OP with racism accusations. We've got moderation tools for this.

Caoilte O'Connor Jul 31, 2024

@oceane @240185 @revk @Nangpa "given cultural contexts" is doing a lot of work there. You can say anything you like is racist "given cultural contexts". You could even say it was racist to assume someone talking about telemarketeers meant a specific ethnic group. (I don't think you are racist, I just don't think this line of thinking leads anywhere healthy.) Anyway thanks for your thoughts. happy to leave it there.

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@caoilte @240185 @revk @Nangpa Alright, good night!

Océane Jul 31, 2024

@revk @240185 @Nangpa Because the French law requires us to inform people they're recorded (including by e.g. CCTV cameras) that's how I was starting my call. Then "if you hang up, I'll sue you", "give me the name of the data broker", and the call operator probably started to feverishly look up diagrams.

@oceane @240185 @Nangpa So you got some low paid worked anxious and worried about his job because they have had to hand over details that could get the company sued (and recorded their side as well I am sure)... So "abusing a worker", the very thing you don't want to do.

And if you succeed in suing then they lose the job.

There is no nice way to sort this out, and breaking their phone for a bit is no worse.