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Velgus t1_j6jex6s wrote

Reply to comment by Unfadable1 in FCC Threatens to Disconnect Twilio for Illegal Robocalls by BasedSweet

People in this thread are just raging at things that their only understanding of comes from a single article combined with their hatred for robocalls. They seem to think that Twilio exclusively works with/for these spam robocall farms - your prohibition analogy is a good one.

There are plenty of legitimate things Twilio is used for. A company a friend of mine works for, for example, uses Twilio to remind patients of their upcoming appointments/procedures, and vitally, if they have to take drugs, or fast, or such, before coming in.

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618smartguy t1_j6ju9t0 wrote

>They seem to think that Twilio exclusively works with/for these spam robocall farms - your prohibition analogy is a good one.

What's giving you this impression? I have no problem thinking a business should be shut down if they are massively profiting off unethical behavior, regardless of what else they are doing. Who cares if they are doing good too? Seems to me like their good deeds are actually bad deeds if ultimately they are allowed to continue operating based on the argument you are presenting.

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Velgus t1_j6kihjt wrote

Your basic argument is again, just like their prohibition analogy.

Twilio isn't performing good or bad deeds in this context - they're offering a service. The service is being taken advantage of by good and bad actors. By the logic you're presenting, we might as well shut down all telecommunications entirely, or any form of electronic communication that could be used by bad actors. Who cares if good stuff is being done with it if bad actors are being supported as well?(/s)

Sure, I'm fine with penalizing Twilio for not making sufficient efforts to block bad actors. In fact they SHOULD be made to provide information and proof on the efforts they take to mitigate bad actors, and penalized if those efforts are not sufficient. But bad actors will always find loopholes and ways to get through - it's not a one-time-fix scenario.

Any penalties should be financial however, not just outright shutting down the company. And it's totally fine if penalties are steep - I'm in the camp that believes corporate fines should be a % of revenue, instead of a flat amount, so they can't be written off as a "cost of doing business".

Shutting them down entirely for simply being a telecommunication service/API doesn't address the root of the problem in any case, since bad actors would just move to various other platforms (MessageBird, Plivo, etc.), which would debatably have even less capacity/capability for detecting bad actors, due to being smaller and having less potential resources to put towards doing so.

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ontopofyourmom t1_j6kffm7 wrote

The innocent third parties who depend on them need time to switch to other platforms

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