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by riffic 2126 days ago
Radio is public. These people need to be named and shamed.

An automated system for recording and archiving these public transmissions with their call signs attached as tags would probably be a good first step.

2 comments

That's an understandable reaction but it's the wrong one.

People like that say the things they say for the attention it attracts to them. They are not ashamed of their dumbass bigoted opinions otherwise they wouldn't be transmitting halfway around the world in the clear. If you engage them in any way, even to try to shame them, you have already given them what they want. They are the trolls of amateur radio.

The right thing to do is what most of us hams do: spin the dial and find someone more pleasant to talk to.

There was a good thread on reddit about this recently and I firmly agree with this comment about how useless "spin the dial" is:

https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/iatqth/a_lot_...

social ostracization and penalty has its time and place, and this is one of those occasions. Same reason cars have number plates.

I hear you, but the flip side is that this is a hobby. I did not get in it to get mad.
not mad at all. My take is that radio is not an ephemeral medium. These transmissions can be slurped down by an SDR, recorded, stored, analyzed, tagged, fingerprinted, indexed, et cetera. By keying up you are effectively making a statement of public record.

At the moment there isn't a financial incentive to perform this at any reasonable scale, but this doesn't mean that it can't be done at all.

This is a very extreme and authoritarian response to a very vocal minority. Who decides what isn't "compliant" with the rules you want to shame them for?
Just record it all and make it indexed/searchable.

Not discriminating here, just want to make it easier to correlate statements to the public record with public call signs.

For real...
You already have to drop your call letters every few minutes while you're on-air, by FCC regulation. HAM radio transmissions are also subject to FCC restrictions on "obscene or indecent" language.

If it crosses the line where it wouldn't be allowed on over-the-air TV, it's not allowed on HAM radio spectrum. You can report it, and with evidence it can lead to nasty fines and/or revocation of license.