California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure • Hacker News Board

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#121

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 11:54 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #96

jonnydubowsky wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recent experience with a credit card customer support agent might as well have been me conversing with a bot. It was actually more frustrating for both me and the agent, that they were so strictly bound to a script, with no room for their creative human brain to actually adapt their response to the unique context of my issue. When customer service is nothing more then an agent choosing from various scripted respon…

I guess the point is that they still save on average. Most calls can probably be handled using a simple script.

Another way they save is by discouraging their use. Since people who've called with real issues have had to waste a whole lot of their time, they're more reluctant to do so the next time they have a problem.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#122

Post by CM30 » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:00 PM UTC

Of course, this all raises the question of whether there are only unethical use cases for bots pretending to be human, or whether a law like this could hit benign uses for bots as well.

For instance, ARGs could have bot accounts for fictional characters on social media sites. These accounts could give pre recorded messages that then hint that the user should visit some third party site for more clues or information. Is that legally dubious? I can see it being so under this law, but I don't think it's comparable to a business running say an automated chat support system and pretending its bots are human.

Same goes with roleplaying bots on online community sites. These aren't a huge thing right now, but they could be in future, with accounts that act like NPCs do in video games or interact with the players account in side quests or what not. These don't seem like they'd be morally 'wrong' things to have on a site, but they'd probably get hit by this law regardless.

Point is, these types of bots don't necessarily only have dodgy use cases.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#123

Post by tastroder » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:02 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #115

tastroder wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have a problem with both in the support case. The alternative to a human contact is a natural language interface that just wastes my time and/or laziness in other parts of the business. If my problem is covered by your FAQ, improve search. If my problem can be solved by a bot, let me do it in your UI. If handling my problem through a human requires more information prepend a form. Provide a clear path to skip/esc…

> If my problem is covered by your FAQ, improve search. If my problem can be solved by a bot, let me do it in your UI. This assumes that people who have a question they need answering will consider searching for an answer or getting to grips with the UI first, rather than heading straight to ask customer support. That's often not the case. Long before support chatbots became widespread, telephone trees made a point o…

Yeah, I can totally agree with that under the constraints you mention. I might conflate my annoyed experience with marketing type bots with the actual requirements for a support one, there's certainly dark patterns with how bots are implemented and integrated these days but if they become more wide-spread I guess we'll figure out how to tackle those as well.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#124

Post by simpss » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #114

nfoz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worst-case web would still support all of the original use-cases of the web, where ordinary folks and organizations were posting ordinary documents that anyone anywhere in the world could view. It's small-business webapps that have problems. But I would be very glad for those to stop doing so many terribly sketchy things that have become the norm on this consumer-unfriendly internet we're dealing with. So like I…

Not really. If you have a personal website with analytics (even your own), suddenly you need to display some cookie warning. If you allow comments all of a sudden you need to follow GDPR. Understanding it may require more time that you were willing to spend on share your ideas with the world. So if you really want to share you move to some big platform that handles it all for you. The law is already so complex that e…

no, GDPR does not have any effect on personal websites.

Article 2 of GDPR defines the scope of the law.

> This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#125

Post by moorhosj » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #91

sushid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints…

You're not answering the question, you're just asserting someone will figure the answer out later and this is totally fine, even though it may not be fine for the person who thought they were doing things right and then suddenly discover they weren't. Vagueness in law isn't a good thing. It leads to people randomly losing everything, even if they made a good faith attempt to follow the "spirit" of the law (whatever t…

The vagueness is how the American legal system has worked since inception. I don’t see it changing now.

Society changes faster than representatives can legislate.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#126

Post by ethbro » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:04 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #117

jlangenauer wrote: post #69

I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) t…

I agree that this is a widespread problem in many areas but I do think there’s a strong argument that bots are worth singling out in the context of social networking, where the bots are often used to steer public opinion in non-obvious ways with no clear ownership. It’s one thing if Samsung’s support chat-bot is misleading but that at least is obviously linked to the company in question whereas, say, the fake Twitter…

The other issue with bots is whether a company's support is bot-only or human.

Free choice and all, but without disclosure (pre-purchase) a company shouldn't be able to "cost manage" their support function by using an algorithm fronted by chatbots.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#127

Post by ethbro » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:08 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #113

jlangenauer wrote: post #69

I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) t…

The "root" of the problem is a tricky metaphor. It can be defined different ways, and the most abstract (ie, You can't swing at it) is often what people come up with. How would you fix, at a general level, the overall human & corporate tendency to play loose with the truth? I mean, we're subtly dishonest all the time.

Implement a tax on advertising budgets and use it to fund an independent watchdog, a la CFPB.

To avoid capture, require all watchdog individuals to be masked / anonymized, with prosecution flowing through the DoJ.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#128

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:08 PM UTC

comboy wrote: post #114

nfoz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This worst-case web would still support all of the original use-cases of the web, where ordinary folks and organizations were posting ordinary documents that anyone anywhere in the world could view. It's small-business webapps that have problems. But I would be very glad for those to stop doing so many terribly sketchy things that have become the norm on this consumer-unfriendly internet we're dealing with. So like I…

Not really. If you have a personal website with analytics (even your own), suddenly you need to display some cookie warning. If you allow comments all of a sudden you need to follow GDPR. Understanding it may require more time that you were willing to spend on share your ideas with the world. So if you really want to share you move to some big platform that handles it all for you. The law is already so complex that e…

You already have server logs for analytics.

What you refer to as “analytics” is actually stalking and I’m glad we have regulation around it now.

By the way, you don’t need to display a warning, you need to ask for consent in a non-intrusive way (consent should be freely given).

Or just you know, don’t stalk people. Seems like an easy enough solution.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#129

Post by alexheikel » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:12 PM UTC

I can say that people like humans way better than bots. We have an app that looks like a bot but is a real person, and we say it at the beginning, but people don’t believe. Once they figure it out, they go crazy. It’s always local people by the way. So I think at some point, bots should be at least explain what they are without pretending they are humans.

Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure

#130

Post by comboy » Fri, Jul 05, 2019, 12:15 PM UTC

simpss wrote: post #124

comboy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. If you have a personal website with analytics (even your own), suddenly you need to display some cookie warning. If you allow comments all of a sudden you need to follow GDPR. Understanding it may require more time that you were willing to spend on share your ideas with the world. So if you really want to share you move to some big platform that handles it all for you. The law is already so complex that e…

no, GDPR does not have any effect on personal websites. Article 2 of GDPR defines the scope of the law. > This Regulation does not apply to the processing of personal data: by a natural person in the course of a purely personal or household activity

If I had a website about programming and it had a forum part is it purely personal? What if is it just comment section? What if I had ads to cover server costs vs when I don't have them now? I closed the website because I don't know. And I don't think I would say I know until I hire a lawyer.

Re analytics part from another comment, I only care how they interact with my website. Without sharing that info with anybody. You could avoid cookies if you really wanted to but then you actually collect more data about your visitors.