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

newyorker.com

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

#191

Post by Will_Parker »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72
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…

Strongly agreed. I didn't want to post yet another "reason #651235 why I loathe adtech" comment, but that's really it. Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people - it would be just another type of crime. This is a problem because of the almost-fraud tactics of sales and marketing that, for some reason, happen to be on the right side of the legal l…

> Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people

How about foreign agents trying to influence elections at scale, or inciting civil unrest?

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

#192

Post by alkibiades »

sushid wrote: post #59
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #9

That 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?

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…

“lawmakers are purposefully vague”. yeah that’s a bad thing not a good thing. it really means almost everything breaks the law and then they selectively and inconsistently enforce on actors they don’t like

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

#193

Post by ummonk »

r00fus wrote: post #187
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…

In the US, at the core of that problem is the deception that corporations are "people" at a fundamental level. That fundamental untruth allows and essentially permits all the others. Bots? Just a manifestation of the above.

So it's okay if a person uses bots to deceptively call people, it just shouldn't be okay for corporations to do it, because they shouldn't be treated as people?

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

#194

Post by lurker458 »

repolfx wrote: post #167
michaelt wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole story is asserting that there are programs routinely running around the internet indistinguishable from humans, making points so excellent they successfully persuade people to switch their political affiliation, which is simply false. The theory isn't that bots are artificial general intelligences trying to convince individuals with clever intellectual debate. The theory is bots try to move the Overton Win…

Firstly, the theory in question is so vague it's hard to say what they are really claiming. But secondly and more importantly, even if what you say is true, the theory is still total nonsense! Where is the evidence for any of this? Where are the networks of bots that were caught spamming low-intelligence identically worded political comments, yet somehow can't be caught by normal spam filters? Where is the testimony…

The US public consultation on net neutrality was famously skewed by bots (posting identical messages, sometimes on behalf of dead people). On Reddit some topics attract bot like behavior as well (groups of users from a non-US ip block voting and posting in concert). Making it illegal won't stop this entirely but will stifle it.

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

#195

Post by jeffdavis »

Will_Parker wrote: post #191
TeMPOraL wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly agreed. I didn't want to post yet another "reason #651235 why I loathe adtech" comment, but that's really it. Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people - it would be just another type of crime. This is a problem because of the almost-fraud tactics of sales and marketing that, for some reason, happen to be on the right side of the legal l…

> Bots pretending to be people wouldn't be of interest at this level if it was just criminals trying to scam people How about foreign agents trying to influence elections at scale, or inciting civil unrest?

How do you enforce the law against foreign agents?

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

#196

Post by adamsea »

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…

True. I would like to add, however, that just because they're not striking at the root doesn't mean they should stop hacking at the branch. It's still an evil branch, to use Thoreau's metaphor.

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

#197

Post by isoskeles »

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…

We also “allow” the government to use deception. This entire thread appears to be focused on mostly inconsequential annoyances like adtech as if this is somehow the worst thing in the world, and the only savior can be the state finding the “root” to regulate and fix as if that wouldn’t include fixing itself somehow.

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

#198

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

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 problem with norms: bad actors don't care about them.

Norms and regulation/law can work together. Either alone are insufficient, I think.

Strong international norms and regulations are probably needed as well. As we clean up our domestic affairs, we create more space for hostile state actors to fill.

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

#199

Post by HillaryBriss »

throwaway13337 wrote: post #60

California is setting a dangerous precident. If individual states each enact individual laws governing the internet, then only large companies will have the resources to follow them. We'll see a balkanization of the web wherein it's no longer very world wide. Small internet businesses will become harder and harder to start. Big monopolies will become entrenched. It's not pretty.

Please keep in mind that this is not California's first internet specific law. It has already passed laws about phishing, sexual exploitation, cyberbullying etc. See https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/privacy-laws

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

#200

Post by scarface74 »

brownbat wrote: post #146
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…

> allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend I agree companies should be forced to tell the truth to their customers, but in all cases where they're asking for details about the customer service rep? That could go weird places. If a caller demanded to know the rep's HIV status, we wouldn't insist the company disclose it. We'd probably demand they didn't. Honesty is important, ok, but the customer…

The service rep's race, religion, medical history, or sexual orientation are probably not up for discussion. Why not national origin?

National origin is different than where the call center is located. A company is under no legal or (in my opinion) moral obligation not to “discriminate” when it comes to choosing which country to locate their call center. I

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