USPS text scammers duped his wife, so he hacked their operation

Seems you didn't know that lots of people in scam call centers aren't there voluntarily. Trafficking and threats

> ... lured to countries through fake job adverts but are instead forced to work in scam call centers, pushing cryptocurrency investments, as well as work-from-home, lottery, romance, and online gambling scams. All this, while being subject to "abject abuse."

> A report from Interpol from earlier this year said victims are also subjected to extortion via debt bondage, beatings, sexual exploitation ...

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/08/human_trafficking_for...

and:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hundreds-thousand...

Mm.

For what it's worth, I can get them to hang up immediately if I recommend they join a trade union.

People who are the victims in a controlling relationship will usually say things that the controller wants them to say, even when the controller is not there. Ask me how I know.

Hmm what's your point? I'd think they're under time pressure, and if they see they can't fool you, they'll immediately proceed with the next target instead. (Regardless of if they're working for themselves or being trafficked & forced)

I can well believe it, and my sympathies to you.

Hopefully the suggestion gave them an idea to reflect on later — I don't know of anything better that can be done when on the receiving end of a phone call.

If they're a good person in a bad place, a union can help — and I suspect that if the calls are monitored, the villains who coerce them will want to avoid future calls to a number that regularly undermines their authority over those they traffic.

On the other hand, the examples people commonly share of where someone contacts a knowing scammer to appeal to their humanity, is that the scammers laugh at their victims — so if the people on the phone are the villains, then I think them hanging up immediately may cause more emotional pain than the stream of expletives they're used to.

Regardless, it saves me time.

This approach may not be so useful now that GenAI, both LLMs and synthetic voices, are getting good.

> This approach may not be so useful now that GenAI, both LLMs and synthetic voices, are getting good.

They are getting REALLY good, it is the old "it is photoshopped" except with sound. The problem though is not being able to differentiate, especially not the people scammers usually target (the elderly).

You cannot believe your own eyes AND ears now, sadly. It might sound dramatic, but it takes "trust no one and nothing" to a whole new level.

A union cannot help them. They generally are in places where there isn't a better option. Go on strike, we will just find someone else to replace you. Unions work when you are hard to replace. (hard is a trade off between many things, not just the cost of training someone new; but also things like the legal climate or future strikes)

Mm, indeed.

I expect that, at some point in my lifetime, bio-printing and tissue culture will probably reach the point we can't even have trust in real life, not even with fingerprints and a DNA test.

Will this happen before or after we become post-scarcity? I don't know.

Unions also give you a team that is rooting for you (even the mere psychological aspect can be surprisingly valuable), and potentially access to a legal fund.

I think you're probably right. I came to the opinion a while ago that one of the very best things you can do to help someone who is a victim of a controlling relationship is to tell them things that are indisputably true in such a way that they can ignore you if they aren't ready to hear it or are unable to respond, but so that their mind will have something to chew on and slowly form the roots of a rediscovery of truth.

This is what I did with a scammer. He kept rationalizing his theft, claiming he's just taking "a little" from many people who are well off and wouldn't miss it. Of course, not only is that bullshit, but it wouldn't justify the theft even if it were true. I appealed to his conscience, sternly, and didn't give him an inch. I ended the conversation by wishing that he will come to renounce his evil ways.

The very fact that he didn't hangup, that he felt he had to explain away his guilt to me (a few times) shows that he himself wasn't convinced of his rationalization and that he himself believed he was doing something wrong. I can only hope that the guilt gnawed its way into his conscious and that the worm that never dies led him to rethink his life and to pick up some honest work.

May the guilty lose sleep, and may their ill-gotten goods taste of ash, and thus be led to remorse and reform and the righteous path. This is love of neighbor.

You are really arguing that slaves in a region with no functioning legal system should join a union?

That's a description of the Russian revolution, I think? Wasn't that serfdom at the time?

Also literal slaves working together, even if you'd not call it a union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution

Can I ask, how did you manage to get away from the controlling relationship? And I wonder if others saw what was going on, or if they didn't understand (when apparently you said what the abusive person wanted)

I'm glad you broke free eventually :-)

> even when the controller is not there

That's good to know, don't think I knew about that

The controller did something so incredibly bizarre and outrageous that I finally saw what they were doing, and I could never un-see it. Others had spoken truth to me a few times over the years, but recognised that they couldn't change my mind for me, so they didn't press the issue. The controller was trying to isolate me from all those others anyway, so if they had pressed the issue the danger would have been that my controller might have then been able to say "See, they hate me and they're trying to break us up" and got me to further cut contact with them. (In fact, this had already happened a few times.) As it was, when I realised what was happening and asked these others for help, they had been waiting ready for me to ask, and sprung into action immediately. One drove all the way across the country to help me out.

So yes, if you know someone who is a victim in a controlling relationship, then gently speak truth to them, don't push too hard, but be ready to give them meaningful help as soon as they come to their senses and ask for it.