Well, at least the Turing test is solved.
California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
21–30 of 278 posts
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#22I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot.
Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#23> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
I feel the same way. It seems like this is likely to catch playful bots and not truly nefarious bots, because in the latter case the owner / author will sufficiently cover their tracks (and will probably not be in the state of California?) I'm excited to see legislation in this direction but I wish they'd focus on forcing Twitter, Facebook, etc. (which /are/ in California and can be governed) to display / disclose wh…
Yes, that's the obvious strategy. They're best placed to test for bots, and arguably they're responsible. And yes, I know, safe-harbor is a thing. But it doesn't protect from allowing illegal ads, so why should it protect from allowing illegal bots?
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#24That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?
1) No, proofreading is not authorship. 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. The judicial system will not specify in writing complete coverage for every loophole. Judges can, regardless, find you guilty.
> 1) No, proofreading is not authorship.
It is when the substitution is both context-aware and not what you intended to write.
> 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”.
Wait, so if someone sends you a question and the suggestions can detect from the context your answer, you're a bot because you chose the suggestion instead of typing out words with the same meaning? Then aren't most people texting going to have to declare themselves bots?
> The judicial system will not specify in writing complete coverage for every loophole. Judges can, regardless, find you guilty.
"Judges will decide something" is no help to you when you're trying to predict what they will decide ahead of time. Finding out after the fact does a fat lot of good after you've already engaged in the behavior in question and an unfavorable ruling puts you in jail.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#25That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?
1) No, proofreading is not authorship. 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”. The judicial system will not specify in writing complete coverage for every loophole. Judges can, regardless, find you guilty.
> 2,3,4) A judge could reasonably find that you were attempting to circumvent the law and declare all of these as “bot”.
Unless you were disabled and using assistive technology.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#26> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
Does this mean you will continue to do so knowing you will be breaking the law?
Well, I never said that I would, just that I could. Just as a way of saying that anyone competent could.
Also, "breaking the law" is an ambiguous thing. I mean, that's one of my favorite Judas Priest cuts, and he was talking about breaking laws against homosexuality. Not that most head-bangers realized it, at the time.
Also, just about every US media company breaks Saudi laws against sinful use of sexual images. And nobody seems to worry much about it.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#27I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.
Those are fairly easy to spot. One dead giveaway is their excessively chirpy voice.
Or, as you did, just say something that puts them off script.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#28> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
Follow the money.
Sure. But not always so easy.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#29> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
Depends. At some point, you're creating fake humans that are so deep under cover that nobody can tell them apart from real humans. When you achieve that, are they still bots? I've also often thought that the cheap bots are easily identifiable (tweeting every 3 minutes, 24/7/365) and that a better bot shouldn't be that hard to build, but then again, I've figured somebody to be a bot that actually wasn't, he was just v…
That's an interesting point. I mean, why are they worried about 100K bots when 100K mechanical turk workers could do the same stuff.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#30> Violators could face fines under state statutes related to unfair competition. I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable. I mean, I could do it, and I'm just a random anonymous coward.
> I doubt that anyone running bots, and who is technically competent, will be identifiable or findable
Google's Duplex is an example of this, and I agree with the law that its use should be disclosed.
The law doesn't have to lead to prosecution of every little criminal. If it polices some of the large players who can't easily hide what they're doing, it'll be a helpful law.