I think a lot of this scourge is actually caused by the elimination of the headphone jack. For nerds it may come as a surprise, but many people do not have wireless headphones, or don’t know how to set them up. Or because wireless earbuds are small without any cable attached, people lose them. Or people have them, but they run out of power.
Any of these problems could force a person to resort to using their speaker instead of headphones. But if we had standard heapdhone jacks like the old days, there would be far fewer excuses.
It also doesn’t help that it’s been a very long time since phones came with headphones included.
A close friend who was born with way more candor than I has made fighting this scourge his life's mission and I love him for it.
He has no shame about calling people out. He will walk up to a person - rich, poor, old, young - in a bar, restaurant, on an airplane, or wherever and just let them have it. He'll start politely ("Hello sir would you please either turn the volume off or put headphones on") and if they don't, he will escalate until either there's a shouting match or they relent.
His record is nearly flawless in accomplishing the mission.
He probably chooses the 'right' subjects for aiming his reprimands at. Now let him go to, say, a train with a number of passengers among whom is an individual who decides to use his phone the same way as a dog uses his dick: to clearly mark what he considers to be his territory. Loud gangsta/Turkish/middle-eastern music blaring from the thing, feet on the seat opposite him, the guy sprawling over three seats just waiting for one of the natives to dare to tell him to tone it down a bit. I'm one of those natives who does on occasion and invariably end up in a who-blinks-first contest with the miscreant. Thus far it has only gotten to threats of violence upon which the creature leaves the train at the next station so most of these dogs don't seem to bite. Some do, though, just ask train conductors in the Netherlands or Germany about their experiences with them.
Man, I broadly agree with you about this type of person, but it makes me cringe that you say "this creature" and use the dog metaphor. He sucks but he's a human.
You are, of course, under no obligation to capitulate to my discomfort, but I figured it was worth commenting.
Sure they are human and their actions are part of human behaviour. Having said that I don't hold with language policing so I just use the terms which best describe their behaviour without trying to tie myself into knots about who might be offended by my word choice. If they dislike being talked about in this way they can just cease behaving in ways which make people talk about them in this way. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
I spent a week in hospital last year and one old bloke in our ward watched YouTube on his phone all day every day at full volume. The rest of us offered to buy him some headphones but he was a cantankerous old shit and was having none of it.
The interesting side note to that story though is that I discovered there's an incredibly seedy side to YouTube premium - all he watched was AI generated videos, with an AI generated voice reading out an AI generated script about how some child had lost their parents in a war and then went on to find god, or a "serviceman" had been in a helicopter crash and then gone on to find god. It's basically scamming old people who are fearing the end. I know it's YouTube Premium because literally every 3rd video was a video about "how do I find my purchased videos on YouTube" which he would watch 20 times in a row and then eventually go off and find his purchased scam bait.
Despite how annoying all this was, I came out of it most angry at YouTube and everyone who works there enabling predatory scumbags to target sick old people.
A far better headline would be "United Airlines says it will boot passengers who play content out loud". But NBC gotta get those advertising clicks I guess.
Any of these problems could force a person to resort to using their speaker instead of headphones. But if we had standard heapdhone jacks like the old days, there would be far fewer excuses.
It also doesn’t help that it’s been a very long time since phones came with headphones included.