Live data from Hacker News

Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

leginfo.legislature.ca.gov

111–120 of 148 posts

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#111
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should at least require that a human initiates and terminates every single call.

What does that mean, exactly? Does the human have to whistle the DTMF frequencies into a handset to initiate the call, or can they use a machine that generates those tones when buttons are pressed? Can a machine automatically press the buttons? If so, how is that different from what is allowed today?

Fair enough, I could have been more specific. Instead of a dialer calling vast quantities of people and a telemarketer only connecting to the calls that actually go through, the telemarketer should be required to initiate the call (through whatever interface), wait to see if the recipient picks up, and then choose to end the call when they see fit. The point is to allow telemarketing but to keep it a fair and symmetrical affair. One person calling one other person as opposed to me being on the receiving end of hundreds of auto-dialed calls while the telemarketers only have to spend their time with the calls that succeed.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#114
post #83
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on the do not call list a warrant SHOULD be easy to get though.

I'll give it a shot, I get about five per day.

Several phone carriers have free anti-spam settings you can enable. The one for t-mobile has been pretty solid.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#115
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give it a shot, I get about five per day.

Several phone carriers have free anti-spam settings you can enable. The one for t-mobile has been pretty solid.

I use T-mobile, but unfortunately have a google voice number. I guess having my calls forwarded from gvoice somehow disables this feature.

As for google voice, I have no idea how many spam calls it's intercepting, but about five a day get through.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#116
post #2

I'm all for this...but can we just ban telemarketing entirely? Why is that even allowed? I've always thought that the law should be written such that telemarketing is legal, but if you engage in it, it is no longer illegal to murder you. You can do it, but you lose your murder protection.

politicians at the Federal level excluded themselves from similar rules along with charities. if we can get them to not exclude themselves we might have a chance at blocking everything

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#117
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on the do not call list a warrant SHOULD be easy to get though.

Through what agency? My local police just give you a pamphlet on avoiding phone scams. And nothing that I've seen has come from my diligent reporting to the FCC. I doubt the FBI is going to give me the time of day. I just don't answer unknown numbers in my phone anymore.

That is why I said should. You would need to be a lawyer to navigate the court system.

For the local police, you have to push them. They are as lazy as anyone else. They also see murder and speeding as more important crimes to focus on - you need to be annoying enough that they help. You may need to walk into court yourself to get the warrant with no police help - something you can do in theory, but in practice I don't know if anyone has ever done it.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#118
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should robots have any rights at all?

Presumably we would want actual artificial intelligence to have rights, right? I'm no fan of slavery over a conscious being.

I agree on that point! But I think robot consciousness is a really long way off.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#119
post #2

I'm all for this...but can we just ban telemarketing entirely? Why is that even allowed? I've always thought that the law should be written such that telemarketing is legal, but if you engage in it, it is no longer illegal to murder you. You can do it, but you lose your murder protection.

I know you're joking, but I (jokingly) considered a law that if you're using your cell phone and are involved in an accident, that accident is your fault and you must pay in excess of actual damages. The problem is of course all the gray areas where there was some emergency, or the unintended side effects of people getting hurt who weren't just being douchebags in traffic.

I had a similar idea where your registration fees are determined by the number of times you honked your horn the previous year.

Re: Bill to ban bots impersonating people for telemarketing and influencing election

#120
post #94

I'm for this, but how is it enforceable? Companies have teams dedicated to this and are still thwarted. I don't see California Government as leader in technology. But maybe I'm wrong. I do see them as a leader in overbudget, late, and often failing projects. So while this sounds good, I don't see it being good.

Attempts so far to ban bot accounts have resulted in a purge of real people who are critical of western governments. When Facebook decided to ban the accounts as identified by Ben Nimmo's team at the Atlantic Council, it also purged people critical of western governments' foreign policies. When this is government mandated I think you see the threat to "free speech." I'm sure this is a bonus to those pushing the react…

How do you know they're real?
Post reply on HN