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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

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matheusmoreira

> severe anxiety

That's a rather apt description for the feelings that telephones cause.

> there are others who are much better able to communicate using voice than with text (heck, including the blind)

Voice messages. All modern asynchronous messaging services support them.

> it doesn’t answer itself

It sure as hell rings loudly all by itself though. It interrupts. Grabs attention. Demands attention. It wakes people up from their precious sleep. For basically no reason whatsoever. Usually because some asshole wants to pitch his products.

As a person with attention deficit, I consider that to be a form of violence against me and my mind. I will defend myself from it.

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> It sure as hell rings loudly all by itself though. It interrupts. Grabs attention. Demands attention. It wakes people up from their precious sleep.

Isn't this a configuration issue? iOS and Android both have sufficiently nuanced control for do-not-disturb to accommodate a ton of usage scenarios.

> As a person with attention deficit, I consider that to be a form of violence against me and my mind. I will defend myself from it.

Characterizing an unsolicited phone call as wrong or rude seems backwards to me. I don't see fault being the caller's but rather the recipient's for not availing themselves of the resources at their disposal to control access to their attention.

Isn't that a bit like saying if your home is broken into, it's your fault for not having better locks?

I would agree that if you want better outcomes, you should learn about and use the mechanisms built into your phone to reduce distractions, but telling people it's their fault that others are treating them with rudeness seems a bit much.

> Isn't this a configuration issue?

No. It's a "people think phone calls are the most important things in the world and they override all other concerns" issue. It's quite visible in the design and implementation of phones and smartphones.

> iOS and Android both have sufficiently nuanced control for do-not-disturb to accommodate a ton of usage scenarios.

They do not allow calls to be completely disabled. Even with all those configurations applied, all my Android phones still show a notification that someone is calling me and that calls were missed. The notifications cannot be disabled. Phone still manages to be an absolute pain even when completely silenced. I got two of those notifications while writing this comment. Literally right now.

The voice mail notification was the worst. It was impossible to get rid of. I tried killing the phone apps via debugger and they still came back somehow. Would not go away until I listened to all the voice mails in full. Of course companies would leave ads in the voice mail. Words can't describe how much I hated that thing. Mercifully I managed to turn voice mail off at the phone company itself after performing some arcane dialing incantations that I don't even care to remember.

> I don't see fault being the caller's

Well I do. Callers think it's OK to interrupt others. That's presumptuous and rude in of itself. The same attitude of an advertiser.

It sounds like you want a tablet w/ a data plan and not a smartphone. I don't know who makes one in the form factor of a phone (though, to be fair, phones are crazy big now and almost pass for tablets). I find that the market serves my desires very poorly, too.

I don't regard people who are call the same way you do. That's just a difference in our experience and outlook. I don't think calling someone is inherently rude. Some people who call me have rude intentions (advertisers, scammers), but I've done what I can to insure I'm not bothered by those people while allowing the people who I want to share my attention with (family, friends, paying Customers) to reach me asynchronously.

I can heartily share being frustrated with the whole "phone" product category. I think phones should be portable general purpose personal computers, completely under the control of their owners first and "phones" second (or third, or fourth). The market seems to disagree (and lots of people make special pleadings about how "phones" shouldn't be under the control of their owners because "they're phones" and not "computers"-- much to my frustration).

I look at it this way: Imagine a world where the concept of a telephone never existed. We all have these portable hand-held computers, but nobody's ever experienced a "phone" before. Now suddenly an app developer invents a way for "anyone in the world to anonymously contact your device, without your consent, have that device (by default) interrupt what it's doing, (by default) ring and/or buzz, (by default) pop up a full-screen modal over what you are doing, and if you press the button, that anonymous person is able to activate your device's speaker and microphone.

I don't think this intrusive app would pass either major store's guidelines. This kind of device takeover/intrusion would be totally unacceptable to many (most?) users.

But, since we already have a concept of what a "phone" is and have gotten used to it, culturally we let it slide.

Virtually every telephone device in use today, has the ability to change the phone ringtone, its volume, or mute it.

You're literally complaining about your own inability to manage the devices you own.

If there is any violence here, it's you. You with an active phone number, misconfigurating it, then blathering on about the results to others.

You can rest assured that my phones are well managed. As well as phones can possibly be managed. Their volumes are set to zero, they are muted and their ringtones are explicity set to silence on top of that.

Disabling calls altogether can't be done. You bet I looked for that knob. Calls are literally baked into the OS. I even asked the phone company to turn off calling. Nope. So I have to live with constant useless annoying notifications that some bot is trying to call me whenever I'm actively using my phone. Welp. At least I managed to turn off voice mail. That was an especially horrible advertising vector.

Only reason I even have active phone numbers is WhatsApp. Technically, I only need SMS for the verification codes. Explaining that to the phone company is futile though.

Anyway, this only fixes part of the problem. Every other person in my life carries a phone with them. Older folks even have landlines. All those phones ring. A lot.

I don't generally make a habit of "configurating" other people's phones, for obvious reasons. I've tried convince them. It didn't work. They're OK with being routinely woken up by useless phone calls every single day because someone somewhere might one day need to call them on that phone to relay important news or something. It has a visible, measurable impact on their quality of life but they refuse to get rid of the phone. I think that's incredibly inhumane but it can't be helped.

Your main issue is that other people receive annoying phone calls yet are unwilling to take simple steps to address the problem?

That's part of it, yes. Also the fact that existing software was apparently built with the assumption that you always want to receive calls, that they are important, so important they can't be disabled or ignored.

More fundamentally, I have a problem with interrupting synchronous communication, and especially the cultural acceptance of it. As I noted in my original comment.

>> the expectation you can immediately and synchronously interrupt any person and demand their full attention

> Needs to end as soon as possible.

What can you do if you don't want to block unknown numbers, e.g. you get a call from a hospital about your injured relative, but you have blocked all unknown numbers

Its kind of funny--I'm the exact opposite. I don't have any messaging services other than email--no twitter, FB, WhatsApp, etc.--and SMS is silenced. If you want to get ahold of me, you either email or call. But I get your point that phones should allow the disabling of the phone app for those that dont want to receive calls. It is kind a historic memory that makes them default and always on.

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